


Only the Light

by scully_dubois



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s02e08 One Breath, Scully's Abduction Arc, X-Files Season 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 62,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26623648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scully_dubois/pseuds/scully_dubois
Summary: AU in which Melissa moves in with Scully post-Scully's season 2 abduction.
Relationships: Dana Scully & Melissa Scully, Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 51
Kudos: 179





	1. Chapter 1

In the soft light of her sister’s guest bedroom, Melissa unfolds the clothing from her suitcase and lays each piece out on the comforter. She’s struck by how pristine the room is. There’s an air of loneliness about it, a sense that it’s been waiting for something that never comes. Like a hotel room without any visitors. 

It is then that Melissa wonders why, or more accurately, _who_ , Dana keeps the room for. Their mother is not far away, and she herself was either never close enough or too close to warrant an overnight visit. Bill and Charlie have families; they would never stay here. Having a 2nd bedroom is nice, but it’s expensive, especially in the Georgetown area. Melissa learned that the hard way. 

“Making bank at the FBI, huh,” she mutters to herself.

“Actually, I’m just a really good saver.”

Melissa turns. Sure enough, there’s her sister with a stack of crocheted blankets in her arms.

“I thought you might need these. It gets cold in here during the night.”

Melissa takes them, smiles. “Are these mom’s?”

“Yep. I save them for special occasions.”

“Thanks, Dana.”

Something flickers behind Scully’s eyes. Melissa realizes that her younger sister is no longer accustomed to being called by her own name. 

Fascinated by this, Melissa grabs some hangers off the closet rack and begins putting each shirt away one by one. Her sister joins her. 

She smiles. Dana’s taken the bait. 

“Is it weird, being called by your last name all the time?” 

Scully pauses, preparing to be offended by the implications of this question.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, just now when I called you Dana, you looked at me like I said aliens were real.”

Scully smiles. She wouldn’t be surprised if her sister _had_ said that. Missy was never the skeptic Scully prided herself on being nor the believer that she tried her best to be. 

“I’m not used to it is all.”

“Being called your name?”

Scully continues hanging the shirts, unwilling to let Missy blow this out of proportion. 

“Well, most people do call me Dana.”

Without missing a beat, Missy finishes the sentence–

“But not Mulder.”

Scully gives her sister a look, much like the one she gives Mulder after he’s rattled off some ridiculous theory about how some exsanguinated livestock are proof of vampires or a cult is actually made up of aliens or really anything that he says.

“No, not very often.”

“I see.”

Missy turns away to chuckle to herself. Of course, Scully notices, and she can’t help but put her sister on the spot. What goes around comes around, as they say.

“What’s so funny?” 

Scully regrets the question as soon as it’s out of her mouth. Missy doesn’t exercise the discretion that she does. How many times had she heard Missy say that she doesn’t “subscribe to Christian self-denial” during their pseudo-therapy sessions? 

True to form, Missy nudges her sister’s arm and says with a laugh, “It’s like Mulder is the only person you ever interact with.”

True to her form, Scully answers this frankly, not dodging the truth in it, but not acknowledging it either.

“Well, our office is in the basement. We don’t exactly consort with our colleagues.” 

Scully laughs and expects her sister to join her. Instead, Missy’s eyes sweep Scully’s face like she’s reading her mind.

Scully stops, unnerved by her sister’s scrutiny. “What?”

“Do you like working on the X-Files?” There it is again. No discretion. 

Scully’s response is as natural as if Missy had tapped her knee to check her reflexes. 

”Of course. I love it.”

Melissa believes this. Much to her own dismay, her sister was never a liar.

“But Mulder’s not very popular, is he? What was his nickname at the Academy again?”

Scully smiles. “ _Spooky_ ,” she says. How fitting, and somehow so untrue. Mulder’s not spooky, and he could never be. Not to her. Yet the thought of everyone else deeming him a black sheep comforted her. She understood Mulder in a way they never would.

“Ah, yes. That’s the one. Fitting, don’t you think?”

Scully just smirks. That’s how it goes, how it always goes. 

“Absolutely.”

She and Missy finish putting the clothes away in the kind of comfortable silence that exists only between two people who know each other well enough to know there’s nothing else worth saying.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Missy's first night at Scully's apartment, the sisters share a candid 3am conversation.

For a moment, she’s flying high above the ground, looking down on the city as if it were one of the train-set play mats she used to roll toy cars over. Then it’s over. She opens her eyes and is met with the blank darkness of the guest room. 

Melissa stretches out a hand, pawing the bedside table and coming to rest against the periodic table coffee mug she’d swiped from her sister’s cabinet. Somehow, it was the least geeky one she could find. 

She sits up and lifts the mug to her lips, only to realize that she forgot to fill it with tap water before bed. She sighs and heaves herself out from under the pile of crocheted blankets that she had in fact needed. 

Her feet thump along the floor as she pulls the bedroom door open and creeps out into the hall. Thankfully, her socks (with ducks on them, a purchase she thought was totally worth it at the time but now is not so sure) dull the noise. 

A pair of blue eyes meets Melissa’s as she walks through the living room. There she is, Dana, curled up on the couch in the middle of the night, the muted TV throwing shadows over her. 

“Missy! I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, no.”

Melissa blinks, trying to pull her mind out of dreamland enough to form cohesive sentences. 

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Are you sick?”

Scully pulls at the ratty blanket in her lap. Missy recognizes it from when her sister was hospitalized for appendicitis years ago. 

“I’m fine.”

 _Really reassuring_ , Melissa thinks. 

“It’s the middle of the night,” she says. “What are you doing out here?”

“Sometimes when I can’t sleep I come out here and put on an old movie. It’s comforting.”

Missy moves in view of the TV and realizes that her sister is watching some black-and-white film on TCM.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

Needing no further invitation, she sits down and tugs some of the blanket over her own lap. Scully rolls her eyes, but lets her take it. The people in the movie talk and talk and talk. Melissa wonders if they’ll ever shut up. Sometimes they pause to take a drink of water or brush a piece of hair behind their ear, but mostly that’s just it, endless talking and no foreseeable action.

Missy watches her sister watch the movie. Dana doesn’t seem bothered by it. She’s enjoying it, even.

“How do you watch this with the sound off? It would make me fall asleep.”

“That’s kind of the point.”

They both chuckle. Scully notices Missy’s empty mug on the table.

“Were you getting water?”

Melissa nods. “But I’m fine now.”

“You don’t have to stay with me. You can go back to sleep if you–”

Melissa covers a yawn. “No, no, this movie is just getting interesting.”

Scully laughs. “Wide awake now, are we?”

Missy pulls the blanket tighter against herself. “Oh, absolutely.”

They let the nonsense on the television amuse them for a moment. It’s almost like they’re little girls again, waking up before their parents, trying (and failing) to pour themselves bowls of cereal without making a racket, spilling the milk (and cleaning it up), then watching Saturday morning cartoons on low volume. If only.

Missy glances over at her sister. “Do you do this a lot?”

“Oh, I didn’t used to, but lately I’ve not been sleeping very well.”

She says this casually, like there’s no discernible reason for this problem. No, worse–like it’s not even a concern. 

Melissa balks at her sister’s indifference. She’s not letting Dana get off that easy. 

“Lately like since the abduction?” 

Scully flinches at the word. Abductions are what happen to kids who wander away from their parents at the mall. They are not what happen to her.

Despite herself, she indulges her sister’s line of questioning. She is not an open person, but Missy is who she is open with. 

“Since…the X-files, I guess.”

Missy leans toward her, her voice rising–

“This has been happening since you started on the X-files?”

Scully shrugs. “It’s to be expected. You see some pretty unusual stuff.”

“Surely you saw some pretty unusual stuff in med school and at the Academy.”

“I suppose.”

“What changed?”

Scully watches one of the men in the movie trip the other, sending him into a slapstick tumble. 

“I don’t know,” she says. Then– ”It’s not practice any more. There are consequences.”

For once, Melissa is too afraid to ask her to elaborate. She touches her sister’s shoulder instead.

“This is not healthy, Dana. You need to get some help.”

Scully flicks a crumb off the blanket.

“I don’t need any help. There’s nothing medically wrong with me.”

 _Medically._ It’s just like Dana to throw that word in there and think it makes everything okay.

“Are you having nightmares?” 

Scully eyes her sister, begging her to drop the subject. _Hasn’t she bared enough of her soul for one 3am hour?_ Missy stares back with the classic Scully family raised eyebrow. 

Scully sighs. “Sometimes. But it’s no big deal, I can separate dreams and reality.”

“It’s not about dreams versus reality, it’s about how your work is affecting your quality of life.”

Scully flips the blanket into Missy’s lap. 

“My quality of life is as high as ever, and you know, I am feeling tired now, so good night.”

She pads off to her bedroom, leaving Missy in the glow of the TV light. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully goes through her morning routine and gets a pleasant surprise that turns into a soul-bearing moment.

She floats outstretched through the sky as if it were the community pool she and Missy used to frequent as children. She tilts her face toward the sun, feels the warmth of it washing over her. Her eyes reflect the brilliant blue sky, mini-oceans in themselves. Her back is to the city, and she’s so high up she can’t hear one bit of the noise on the ground. She hopes this is what heaven is like. If this is heaven, she has nothing to fear. 

And then she’s falling, a casualty of gravity. Hell has found her. It always does. This is an unfortunate truth she must live with. The sky races past her and there’s a pit in her stomach so deep she thinks she must be breaking the laws of physics, her body stretching like a rubber band about to snap. Surely she is not a human being anymore. Surely she won’t be by the end of this.

The ground hurdles toward her. She can’t see it, but she knows. She wonders what shape they will find her in, or if she will even be found. She hopes for her family’s sake that she’s in so many pieces they can’t put her back together. It’s easier, she thinks, when the body doesn’t look human. Burying a radiant-looking thirty year old is sad. Burying a mangled mess of a corpse is a relief. 

As if on cue, her alarm chirps. She awakes in one piece and punches the alarm, reality whisking away the horror of her dreams. Sweat saturates her silk pajamas, leaving a morning dew of sorts on her sheets. The blankets were thrown off at some point during the night. She does not remember doing this, so she can only assume it was the work of the demonic force in her brain.

Waking up in a puddle of her own sweat has become commonplace since she was returned. The first time the heat was so stifling she thought she must have had a fever that broke, but the mercury thermometer in her bathroom said otherwise. Her body seems to have a mind of itself these days. 

For the time being, _her_ mind is still functioning, so she pulls herself out of bed to get ready for work. This routine part of her day is a privilege she relishes. Very rarely does she get to function on autopilot.

It goes like this: first, she slips off her pajamas and changes her underwear. It is at this point without fail that she realizes she hasn’t bought a new pantyset in years, and wouldn’t it be nice if she did? This mental note slips away by the time she buttons her suit jacket and tucks her undershirt into her slacks.

Next, she switches on the bathroom light and performs the typical tasks of self-care--brushing her teeth, washing her face, and whatnot-- that some might find tedious or annoying. For Scully, they are soothing. She spends too much time thinking about aliens and not enough thinking about herself. She’s not sure she believes in either, but god, it would be nice to try. 

Veering close to the latest possible time at which she could still expect to beat DC traffic to the office, she brushes her hair (no time for a hundred strokes), dabs some concealer under her eyes, and swipes on her favorite lipstick. No need to go all out; she knows where she stands.

Finally, she opens her closet and stares at the rack of heels. They’re uncomfortable and damn inconvenient for an FBI agent, but Mulder’s tall and she is not. She had a fraction of her current pairs before she met Mulder. No coincidence. 

She chooses the tallest pair she owns because she needs the confidence boost. They’re headed to a nursing home in Massachusetts today, so hopefully there will be no running in the woods involved. 

She click-click-clicks down the hallway. The scent of strong coffee permeates the air. She turns the corner, and there’s her sister with a pot of coffee and two plates of scrambled eggs. It is seven o’clock in the morning, and they were up at 3am last night. The last thing Scully expects is for her sister to be cognizant, let alone to have _cooked._

“Good morning sunshine.” Missy slides a plate over to Scully’s usual spot at the table and pours the piping hot coffee into a ‘Kiss Me, I’m A Doctor’ mug. 

Scully pinches herself. No, she’s not dreaming. This is too happy to be one of her dreams anyways.

“This is a surprise,” she says as she takes a seat at the table.

“Well, I fell asleep on the couch and woke up at 5:30. I figured it’s been awhile since someone’s cooked you breakfast.”

Scully takes a sip of the coffee. 

“I don’t even cook _myself_ breakfast.”

“Exactly.”

Melissa tops off Scully’s mug. 

“Is it strong enough? I couldn’t drink mine without adding about a half a cup of milk, so I figured I must be doing something right.”

Scully is so grateful to be waited on that it could be a milkshake and she wouldn’t complain. It is strong enough though, stronger than the milk and sugar mixture someone calls coffee at the FBI. 

“It’s perfect,” she says, meaning it.

“Good. I saw the end of that movie, by the way. You were right, it’s a real snoozefest.”

Scully laughs. “I actually like that movie. That’s why it helps me fall asleep.”

Missy scoffs. “They spend the entire movie pining over each other just for one chaste kiss at the end! Where’s the fun in that?”

“Probably shortly after that chaste kiss.”

Missy smirks, pleased that she’s gotten her sister to make a sex joke at seven o’clock in the morning. She softens her voice-- 

“I did want to talk to you, though.”

Scully finishes chewing the forkful of scrambled eggs in her mouth. 

“I have to leave soon or I’ll be late.”

“Late for what? One of Mulder’s slideshows?”

Scully sits back. Maybe Missy has a point.

“I’m sure you’re tired of my questioning,” Missy says, “so I won’t ask you another thing. Say what you need to say.”

_Say what you need to say._ So simple, yet so powerful. It occurs to Scully that no one ever gives her this type of shameless permission. They shouldn’t have to, but she’s never been one to talk out of turn. What a relief to have the freedom to speak plainly. 

She exhales. She has spent the past weeks playing back the few memories she has of her disappearance--she won’t call it the other word--and trying to decipher what happened to her. She is no closer to figuring it out than she was when Mulder gave her necklace back, but it might help to share what she does remember.

She launches into it, her memories flowing out in one long stream.

“You know, when I was in the hospital, I kept having this vision that I was in a lifeboat. There was a rope tying it to the dock and on the dock were all the people I loved, the people that were around me. You and mom and Mulder and the nurses.”

Melissa listens sympathetically, shocked and relieved that her sister is opening up.

“But I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything but sit there in that boat and hope that somehow, the tether wouldn’t snap.”

This is the most vulnerable Missy can remember seeing her sister since the passing of their father. There are a respected few who have witnessed Dana Scully reveal the inner workings of her mind. It’s a rare honor to witness Dana Scully reveal the inner workings of her heart. 

Scully continues.

“And then it did snap, and I had...I can only describe it as a near-death experience. Dad was there...He was in his uniform with all his medals and he told me that he loved me and—that we would be together again, but not yet.”

Missy nods along.

“So I guess...that kept me from going. That’s how I knew I had to stay.”

“Wow,” Missy breathes.

“From then on, I could hear everything you guys were saying. I heard you and mom telling me that I was below the criteria of my living will and I was trying to give you a sign…”

Her voice breaks. 

“I was so scared you would pull the plug on me.”

“Oh my god, Dana.” Missy engulfs her in a hug. “I am so sorry.”

Scully breathes into her sister’s neck. Her hair smells like the strawberry shampoo they used when they were children. She wonders if Missy still uses it, decides that now is not the time to bring that up. Instead, she lets go of the hug first.

“I started thinking, if I am below the criteria of my living will, maybe that’s the right thing to do. Maybe if I ever truly wake up, I’ll be so damaged I won’t be able to work for the FBI or have anything resembling a happy life.”

She sighs. “And you and mom said your goodbyes, and I was thankful, actually, that I got to hear them because so many people don’t and you just...never know with my profession.”

She bites her lip to keep from crying.

“And then sometime later I heard Mulder come in, and his wasn’t a goodbye. He touched my hand—I could feel it but I couldn’t respond—and he told me he was there. And I could feel his sadness, but I could also feel his hope. And that was all I needed, was hope.”

“He gave you the strength to wake up,” Missy says, partly as a question. 

“Or the courage to.”

Melissa considers this. She remembers how solemn she felt going to Fox’s apartment that night, delivering the news that her sister was weakening. This must be how nurses feel when they tell loved ones to say their goodbyes, she thought at the time. When he said he wasn’t able to go see Dana in the hospital, she was furious. _How can you be so naive?_ she thought. _Are you so afraid of pain you refuse to feel your own feelings?_ She realizes now this sounds like something she might say to her sister. 

Melissa decides not to mention her involvement in any of this. After all, she hadn’t succeeded in convincing Fox to go to the hospital. That was his own choice. Instead, she says--

“He was really looking out for you, you know. He was a soldier for your cause.”

The edges of Scully’s lips turn up the slightest bit.

“I don’t doubt it. Mulder is nothing if not a good soldier.”

Melissa thinks back on meeting Fox. She said that Dana had talked to her, that her soul was there. He didn’t believe her.

“Fox was exactly what you said he would be,” she tells her sister, “and somehow I was still surprised by the sheer force of his determination.”

Scully chuckles. 

“Well, I don’t exaggerate these things. If anything, I downplay them.”

“No kidding.”

Melissa wets her lips, letting silence rest comfortably at the table with them.

“You’re really lucky you know, to have him as a partner.”

Scully nods. 

“I know.”

And she does.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy and Scully's girls night gets interrupted by an uninvited guest...

The elevator doors part, releasing Scully into the tranquility of her hallway. She steps out, glad to be away from the bustling FBI building and the noisy street and the elevator so squeaky that she’s pretty sure she’ll find herself trapped in it one of these days. That’s a problem for another time. For now, all Scully wants is to take off her shoes, pantyhose, and bra. The simple pleasures.

She sticks her key in the doorknob and turns. The deadbolt clicks. She’s locked it. She sighs. Missy left the door unlocked  _ again. _ She twists the key the other way and it opens. She enters and drops the key, her purse, and her badge on the side table.

“It’s me!” Her voice echoes through the place.

“I’m in here,” Missy responds from the kitchen.

Scully enters the kitchen. Her sister’s still in the hostess uniform for the restaurant job she just got. She flips mindlessly through an issue of  _ Better Homes and Garden. _

“You left the door unlocked again.”

Missy flips a page of the magazine so hard she almost tears it. “Oops.” 

Scully sighs and sits down at the table. Her sister has always been the dramatic type.

“How was training?” she offers.

Missy sets down the magazine as if she’s thankful to have an out.

“Pretty standard for an upscale eatery that calls itself casual but charges twenty dollars for a bowl of soup. Turns out, the East Coast isn’t actually that different from the West Coast.”

“Wow. Who’ve thought?”

Missy chuckles. “I know, right?”

“Speaking of the West Coast…”

Melissa groans. Her sister’s been trying to get information about her whereabouts ever since she moved in. She’s under the impression that everyone’s life is as interesting as working for the FBI, and while Melissa tries to make hers so, there’s just not much to report. Except for the one thing she’s specifically avoiding. She will tell Dana at some point, she  _ has _ to, but for now she doesn’t want to add to the cacophony of things her sister has to worry about. Besides, it’s not anything bad. If anything, Melissa is looking forward to telling her. It’s their mother she’s worried about.

“I told you, it’s nothing juicy. I was out there doing odd jobs. Waitressing, mostly. There was a stint as a gas station attendant.”

Scully laughs. “A gas station attendant?”

“In Oregon you’re not allowed to pump your own gas.”

Scully raises her eyebrows. “Seems like it wouldn’t be a very safe job for a young woman late at night.”

Missy shrugs, then, with the dedication of an Oscar-winning actress, says, “It was a male dominated profession, but I made do.”

Scully smiles. She knows the feeling. She steps out of her heels and carries them into her bedroom. She shimmies off her pantyhose, then sits on the edge of the bed and presses her thumbs deep into the arches of her feet.  _ Heaven. _ After a moment of bliss, she takes a pair of pink fuzzy socks from her drawer and slips them on.

She returns to the kitchen--“Have you had dinner?” 

“Just a bowl of salad,” Missy replies. 

“Am I to assume by your pitiful tone that you’re up for something else?”

“If you order something and tell me I can have it, who am I to say no?”

Scully chuckles. “How courteous.” She pulls out a drawer full of take-out menus in various conditions. Some of them Scully has had since her Academy days. 

“The ones on the top are Mexican, the middle is Chinese and Japanese, after that is Italian, and the bottom ones are Indian.” 

Few things that Dana has said have surprised Melissa as little as this organizational structure. What she doesn’t expect is the sheer volume of her sister’s collection. Her eyes widen as she approaches the drawer. There’s literally hundreds of menus stacked in there. 

“Um, may I ask for the chef’s recommendations?”

Scully pulls a couple menus out like it’s nothing.

“Well, if you’re in the mood for curry, this one is great,” she slides a colorful menu toward Missy. “But this is the best Chinese takeout in the city.” She sets down a menu with the Chinese symbols for good fortune on it (yes, Missy knows some Chinese). Missy figures they could both use some good fortune, so she picks up that one.

“Do they have hot & sour soup?”

“I’m sure. I always have the fried rice and orange chicken.”

“Oh, that sounds good too. Can we do a bowl of hot & sour soup and two portions of rice with orange chicken?”

Scully picks up the phone. “Of course.” She dials the number from the menu. As it’s ringing, Missy whispers, “And fortune cookies?”

“They always give you some. They’re not very goo-” The restaurant picks up. A fast-talking voice buzzes in Scully’s ear. 

Melissa laughs at this slip. As her sister’s about to recite the order, she adds, “I don’t care, I just want to read them.”

Scully tells the woman the order, confirms that it’ll come with fortune cookies, and gives them her address and unit number. She thanks the woman, hangs up the phone.

“It’ll be 25 minutes,” she tells Missy.

“Perfect.” Scully can tell from the sound of her voice that she’s up to no good. 

“Perfect for whatever villainous plot you’re about to drag me into, you mean?”

“Perfect for us to get ready for the girl’s night we’re about to have,” she replies matter-of-factly. 

Scully opens her mouth to protest, but Missy beats her to it. “I know, I know. It’s Thursday, you have work tomorrow, you’re tired...but it doesn’t have to be anything grand. Just a little self-care and relaxation, okay?”

Scully frowns in her funny, ‘I’m not actually upset, I just can’t think of a good comeback’ way. 

“And besides,” Missy continues, “you don’t wanna be a party pooper, do you?”

Scully frowns for real this time. This unearths some childhood insecurities she had forgotten she had. It conjures up the image of teenaged Missy with a pack of cigarettes--their mother’s--begging her to sneak out the window and smoke them together, that it would be fun. How she said no until she couldn’t bear her sister’s juvenile belittling anymore. It figures that she has to be guilted into having fun. She bets that her parents would never have imagined that their little girl smoked a cigarette younger than their free-spirited daughter ever did.

“Come onnnnn,” Missy drawls. “We can get in our pajamas and slippers, and I have some avocado face masks we can do. Plus, I brought my box set of Golden Girls.”

Scully can’t help but smile at that. On nights before big exams in medical school, she would put Blanche, Dorothy, Sophia, and Rose on in the background to keep her company as she studied. She called it her golden good luck charm because she passed every test she did this with. 

“Fine.”

_ Fine. _ The Dana stamp of approval! Missy leaps into action. “Go get dressed, and I’ll grab the face masks.”

Scully does as she’s told (per usual). She chooses her silkiest pajama set because this feels like an occasion to go all out. A few minutes later, she’s sitting on the couch letting Missy spread the avocado paste across her face. 

“Is this just mashed up avocado?” she asks. “Could we eat this?”

“I think there’s honey in it too.” Missy scraps a dot off where it spilled over to Scully’s headband and licks it. “Not bad...Are you that hungry?”

Scully chuckles. “No, I was just wondering.”

“Well, if it does to your insides what it does to your face, then watch out.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll pass on that,” Scully remarks.

“Good choice.” Missy finishes Scully’s face and turns so that Scully can do hers. Scully dips a finger into the green paste. It’s cold and sticky, not exactly a desirable combination.

“Do you do this a lot?” she asks Missy.

“Usually once a week, if I think of it.”

Scully wouldn’t have the time to think of it, let alone do it. “That’s nice,” she says wistfully, realizing there’s not much farther she can take the subject.

“I brew some tea, light some incense, and boom. My own personal nirvana.”

“Mmm.” Scully’s feeling increasingly isolated by this conversation. Missy reads her mind in the typical way.

“You don’t take much time for yourself.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“I just don’t have much time in general,” Scully replies on the defensive.

“And you certainly don’t allot what you do have to yourself.”

Scully lifts her finger off Missy’s face, dips it back into the paste. “I take care of myself,” she says.

“But you don’t  _ spoil  _ yourself.”

“Who am I to be spoiled?” And there is the fundamental ideological difference between Missy and her sister. Missy, who wants life to be overflowing with joy, bereft of nothing. Dana, who believes that nothingness gives her strength, and strength gives her character.

The delivery man's knock on the door eclipses any response Melissa was planning to make. Probably for the best. This is the rift the sisters cannot manage to pave over.

Missy grabs the food and pays the man. She knows her sister would be embarrassed to be seen with the mask on, and she’ll do anything to make Dana’s life that much easier. 

They dig in, eating straight from the cartons. Missy insists on using chopsticks, which works great for the chicken but not so hot on the rice. She doesn’t bother trying them with the soup. Scully doesn’t have the patience for any of it, so she sticks to the plastic fork that came with it all.

Between bites of chicken, Scully reaches for a fortune cookie. Missy swipes it out of her hand, sending it catapulting toward the floor. 

“What was that for?” Scully exclaims.

“Haven’t you ever heard that it’s bad luck to read your fortune before you finish the meal?”

“No?”

“Well, that explains a lot then.”

Scully smirks, sets the cookie back on the table with the others. “I think you just wanted that one.”

Missy feigns innocence, then shrugs. “I have a good feeling about it.”

\-----------

A few minutes later, the girls have settled on the couch, empty cartons of take-out strewn on the table in front of them. The four fortune cookies they received are all wrapped up. They’re too full to bother with them just yet. They chirp bits of commentary about the Golden Girls episode they’re watching back and forth between each other.

“I see some Blanche in you,” Scully comments, “but mostly I think you’re Rose.”

“She’s my favorite, so I will gladly accept that,” Missy replies.

The episode’s laugh track nearly conceals a slight rap on the door. 

Scully looks toward the door. “Did you hear something?” 

Missy clicks the volume down on the remote. “Maybe. I’ll check.”

She heads for the door, peeks through the peephole, then unfastens the chain and lets the door swing on its hinges.

“It’s Mulder!” she exclaims after Mulder has already stepped through the doorway.

It is, in fact, Mulder. Still in his work clothes and holding a manila folder. His eyes widen in surprise.

“Oh. Melissa.”

She smiles slyly. Evidently, he did not expect her nor her face mask.

“Hello, Fox.”

Scully pulls her feet up onto the couch and crosses her arms protectively over her chest, hoping that somehow, maybe, he won’t notice her here in her own apartment. Her first thought is that she’s not wearing a bra. She realizes that this is an unproductive thought to have because it’s not like she’s naked or anything, she’s wearing a pajama top, and he’s seen her in a pajama top before. Hell, he saw her in her underwear on their first case! Not to mention that he’d seen her on her deathbed, and is there anything more naked than that? Still, she hadn’t expected him, and she feels caught off-guard by his sudden appearance. 

For what it’s worth, Mulder is caught off guard by her too. She looks... _ soft.  _ Relaxed. He very rarely gets to see her in casual circumstances. Even in the assortment of motel rooms he’d sat with her in, she was always keyed up, her mind trying to piece together the puzzle of whatever case they were on. This was new territory. 

“Hi, Scully,” he croaks. 

“Hello,” she replies sheepishly. 

Mulder can’t take his eyes off her. He’s endeared by the green face mask and all of its components. The headband pulling tendrils of her hair tenderly away from her face, the stray locks that have slipped out and stuck to the paste, the extra youthful look it gives her...he never realized how much he missed out on. How much she keeps from him. Suddenly, he’s certain: the woman sitting on the couch isn't Scully. It’s Dana, and there's nothing he wants more than to get to know her better. 

Remembering what he’s there for, he holds the folder out to her. 

“Uh, I just came to give you these toxicology results. I thought you might want to review them before tomorrow.”

She takes the folder while keeping one arm stationed in front of her chest.

“Thank you. I will.”

She plops the folder with the mess on the coffee table and returns both arms to her chest.

Feeling like the intruder that--in Scully’s mind--he is, Mulder glances at the TV.

“Golden Girls. That’s serious business, I’ll get out of your hair.”

Melissa mutes the TV. “Actually, we were just discussing what Golden Girl we think we are. We agreed that I’m Rose, but we’re still trying to figure out Dana.”

This is a challenge Mulder is more than happy to accept. 

“Dana…” He looks at her with a lop-sided smile, letting the word roll off his tongue in a teasing way.

Scully blushes. Oh how she wishes her body would not so easily give her away. Figuring there’s nothing to lose, she takes this opportunity to catalog the colors in his eyes. She has an ongoing debate with herself about what color they actually are. She’s seen green, brown, and blue with such certainty that she’s pretty sure he has the ability to change them like a mood ring. She’s not sure she would want to know what each color means. 

She decides that they’re looking quite green tonight (is that good?) and breaks eye contact with him out of necessity. Call it self-preservation.

This silent exchange pleases Melissa, maybe even more than it does Mulder. She loves being right as much as her sister does. 

“I was thinking she’s a Dorothy,” Melissa pipes up. “What do you think, Fox?”

He flinches. Melissa scoffs. “Sorry-- _ Mulder. _ What is it with FBI agents and insisting on being called their last name? That’s got to be some sort of psychological phenomenon.” Then, because she can’t resist--“You should open a x-file on that.”

Scully chuckles. Mulder just purses his lips.

“Ha ha. Very funny.”

“I know,” Melissa claps back in jest. “That’s why I said it.”

Scully looks toward the window. She could have sworn she saw a flash of lightning outside, but no thunder follows it. When she looks back, Mulder’s eyes are trained on her once again.  _ Yep, still green.  _ He pushes some of the cartons aside and perches on the table in front of her and Missy. If Scully put her legs down, their knees would touch. 

“Dorothy is the obvious choice,” he says. “But that’s too easy. Scully’s not easy.”

Scully flicks her gaze toward Missy, who bites her lip to keep the sarcastic comment in her mind from slipping out. 

“So what is she then?” Melissa challenges.

Scully’s eyes meet Mulder’s. She’s not sure what he’ll say, and she’s not too worried about it. What matters is that she’s looking at him, he’s looking at her, and her skin feels like it’s been warmed by the sun. This is not a normal reaction to another human being looking at you, she knows. She made a pact with herself early on not to think too hard about it. It’s moments like this that make her question the point of that.

She feels sated...she so rarely feels that way. Realizing that there is nothing worth keeping from him, not right now, Scully lowers her hands into her lap.

Feeling like he’s done something right, Mulder smiles. He answers Missy’s question without taking his eyes off his partner. Scully’s burning up.

“Well, she’s smart but not pretentious, curious but not unconventional, reliable but not naive, honest but not a curmudgeon, and diligent but not intense...so I don’t know.”

He looks to Melissa. 

“Are any of the Golden Girls as interesting as that?”

Scully’s breath catches. This is quite possibly the most romantic moment of her whole life...What does that say about her? She lowers her feet so that her silk pajama bottoms nuzzle his coarse slacks. Call it a gesture of goodwill. Meanwhile, Mulder wonders if Scully notices that their kneecaps are touching.

Missy smiles. She’s engineered  _ a moment, _ and what a wonderful one. 

“I suppose not,” she replies lightly. “Dana’s one of a kind.”

“That’s for sure.” Mulder clasps Scully’s hand, and for a second, she thinks he’s going to kiss it. His fingers slip away and grab a fortune cookie off the table instead.

He rips the plastic off it, then snaps it in half. He sets a half in Scully’s open palm as if on instinct. She didn’t even realize she had turned her hand up. Her fingers close over the cookie. She couldn’t possibly eat it now that he’d touched it. Or was that all the more reason to eat it?

Mulder pulls the paper from his half, pops the cookie in his mouth, and crunches as he reads the fortune. “Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned...huh.” He crumbles up the plastic and sticks it in his pocket. “Never seen that one before.”

“Me neither,” Scully remarks dreamily. Melissa looks on, feeling like she’s watching a movie play out in front of her.

Mulder rubs his hands against his pant legs to extend the moment, then stands up, bumping Scully as he does.

“Sorry,” he says, resting a hand on her shoulder. She shakes her head to indicate it’s nothing. “You’re fine.”

As she looks up at him, Mulder finds himself struck with the desire to swim in those blue eyes of hers. He knows that his feeling for Scully--whatever it is--is different from the girls on his magazines and tapes. His thoughts about Scully are somehow both innocent and ridiculously gratifying. His thoughts about the other girls are neither.

“Well, I’ll get going,” he says, stepping around Scully and Melissa’s feet. He turns back to meet Scully’s glance one last time--

“See you tomorrow morning.” He winks.

Scully is so charmed by this all she can muster up is, “Uh-huh.”

Missy bursts into laughter as soon as Mulder closes the door. Scully lets her. She looks down at her palm and realizes that she has put so much pressure on the fortune cookie that it crumbled. She won't read into that either. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder and Scully head to Aubrey, MO, but not without a few bumps in the road...

Five days. She was five days late. She had never been five days late for anything in her life. Why did it have to be this? Always the perfectionist, she double, then triple checks her math. For once, she hates being right. Five days off, no matter how many times she counts it. 

She looks at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. It shudders back at her.  _ This is not possible, _ she thinks. Her cycle is always on time, and she hasn’t done anything lately near the type of activity that would get her pregnant. But by now, she knows better. Anything is possible, including the unthinkable. Especially the unthinkable. No amount of disbelieving can stop the force of the universe. No amount of believing can either, no matter how devout. These are truths she wishes she never learned.

It occurs to her that she sounds like her sister, which makes her chuckle to herself despite the dreary circumstances. That’s what a few weeks of living with someone can do to you. Then again, maybe it isn’t Missy who’s changing her. The voice in her head sounds more and more like Mulder these days. It scares her sometimes...how succinctly he can present his point of view, how she’d spent almost three decades skeptical and comfortable in this belief and now--less than two years later--she could almost believe him.  _ Wants _ to believe him, no less.

Mostly though, she wants the truth. Which is what he wants too, but he has a preconceived notion of what he wants that truth to be, and won’t ever be satisfied, she thinks, until he is proven right. The thought that he might never have satisfaction makes her stomach ache. Or maybe that’s a symptom of her other problem...regardless, Scully finds that the notion of never getting answers to their quest makes her want to dissolve into thin air. The desire to disappear was new to her. How odd, to care so much it makes you wish you had never cared at all. This was new to her too.

But as always, she has to keep going, keep moving, keep working, keep her sanity. She puts in her earrings, swipes on her lipstick, and switches off the bathroom light. In her bedroom, she puts on her favorite pair of heels (the most comfortable ones) and zips the pockets on her suitcase. She rolls it into the kitchen, where Missy sips coffee with so much cream it might as well be milk.

“You’re here late,” Melissa remarks.

Scully nods. “I have a flight to Missouri.”

“Oh.” Missy sets the mug down. “Will you be home tonight?”

“I don’t know...maybe...hopefully.” 

“Yet you packed a whole suitcase?”

Scully casts a stray glance at the luggage. “I like to be prepared.”

Missy frowns. “Don’t you think you should take a leave of absence?”

As if she didn’t hear, Scully asks, “What?” 

“All this traveling and the long hours, while you’re recovering from trauma, no less. It’s not good for you.” 

Scully purses her lips. “I’d rather be traveling and working than sitting around here all day.”

“You mean you’d rather be ignoring your feelings.”

Scully recoils, as wounded by this as anything. Being seen as you are never gets easier. It hurts just as much as when they were teenagers and Missy told her she was too nerdy to ever be cool (“and why would you want to be?” is the part she always forgets about), or when they were kids and Missy wouldn’t share her dolls because Scully was “not a good mommy.” If psychics were real, Missy would be one.

Not that Scully would admit that. 

“I’ll have plenty of time to process my feelings on the plane,” Scully half-jokes.

“But you won’t!” Missy retorts in good humor as Scully heads for the door. 

And then, because they’re sisters and no amount of ill will could change that, Missy yells across the place, “Love you! Be careful! Bye!”

Scully laughs as she unlocks the door. “Bye, Missy! Don’t throw any parties while I’m gone.”

“Uh-huh.”

And so the natural balance of things is restored. 

\-------------------

She meets Mulder in the terminal at Dulles and they go through their usual morning flight routine: coffee & breakfast (a breakfast sandwich for him, a bagel for her), a stop at the kiosk for Mulder to buy sunflower seeds (he buys her a trashy gossip magazine for fun every time), and a brisk jog to their gate because why “waste time,” as Mulder puts it, by showing up early. There’s usually a remark from Scully about how she’s wearing heels so he needs to slow down, followed by him quipping that she needs to get her head in the game, at which point she reminds him that his legs are at least twice as long as hers. 

“It’s not the heels that are the problem,” she teases. “And while we’re on the subject, you wouldn’t be able to pass a sobriety test stone-cold sober in these.”

“You get one cup of coffee in this woman, and suddenly the trash talk comes out,” Mulder says to the air. 

“You better watch out or we’ll switch shoes and see how you like it.”

“You underestimate me, Dana Scully.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“I’d prove it, but it would only make you look even more vertically challenged than you already are,” he taunts. 

“Not when the heels snap and you turn them into flats.”

“Touché.” 

They have some form of this conversation before nearly every flight. It’s one of their rituals, a comforting familiarity in an often uncomfortable line of work. No matter what has happened, they can return to this harmless banter and find solace in it. Scully’s dad died, but they were here. Deep Throat got shot, but they were here. Scully was kidnapped, but they are here again. Scully wonders if the rest of her life will continue this way. She’s not sure if that would be a good or bad thing. She does not say any of this out loud.

They board their flight without any problem. Mulder lifts their suitcases into the overhead compartment as Scully scoots into the window seat. That’s a benefit to traveling with Mulder; he needs the space, so he always takes the aisle seat, leaving Scully with whatever gorgeous view the flight graces them with.

Of course, she usually isn’t looking. Unsurprisingly, Scully’s flight activity of choice is catching up on her reading. The case files, the morning newspaper, sometimes even the gossip magazine Mulder bought her if the case doesn’t keep her busy. She makes a mental note to give this copy to Missy when she gets back. Cheesy stuff like that always makes her smile. 

Mulder’s preferred activity, on the other hand, is sleeping. He doesn’t do much of that and has come to realize that a plane is actually one of the easiest, most comfortable places for him to fall asleep. His in-flight power naps are treasured by both him and Scully, who gets through her reading uninterrupted and--every once in a while--uses the occasion to observe the way her partner’s mouth hangs slightly open and his chest rises and falls with his breath. She doesn’t get to notice these things when he falls asleep in their rental car, though that doesn’t happen very often. She’s the one who’s prone to dozing off during a late night drive past cornfields, or deserts, or plains. Perhaps it has something to do with comfort, or the lack of it. She could never sleep on the plane with all these strangers around. The car is much cozier.

The flight to Missouri passes uneventfully. Mulder snores, quiet enough that Scully is almost certain she’s the only one who can hear it. This makes her smile. She wonders, as she frequently does during moments like this, if he is dreaming and what he dreams about. Consorting with aliens, probably. Does he dream about her, or would she be a stranger in his land of dreams? He is no stranger in hers, that’s for sure.

Soon enough the wheels hit the tarmac, and Mulder wakes up almost instantly. Is it any wonder that he’s so at home in the sky? He’s been looking that way for most of his life. It’s the ground that’s alien to him. 

Mulder pulls the carry-ons from the overhead bin and they exit the plane in the same way they spent the flight, silent but content. They agreed early on that they wouldn’t talk much on flights. It’s like talking in a library. They get the witty banter out of the way in the airport and leave the more interesting stuff for the rental car. Luckily, they never run out of things to discuss.

\----------------

They move through the airport and sign for a rental car. Mulder takes the keys and they hop in, Mulder in the driver’s seat, Scully on the passenger’s side. Mulder cranks the engine. It grumbles in response.They are alone for the first time all morning. 

Scully unfolds a pastel paper map they bought in the shop. “So you’re going to get on I-29 and head north,” she instructs. “Stay on that for a while, it looks like we’re fairly far away from Aubrey.”

“The Bureau couldn’t have picked a closer airport for us to fly into, huh?”

“I guess it’s more cost effective if we finish the last leg of the trip ourselves.”

“It won’t be when I use the Bureau credit card to fill up this piece of junk.” He flashes a smile toward the passenger seat, shifting his gaze off the road a moment to see if she’s smiling too.

She is, but she keeps her lips together, unwilling to give herself away so easily. There’s a telltale sparkle in her eyes though. 

Mulder pulls out of the parking lot. “I’ve been meaning to ask you what Melissa was doing at your place the other night. You didn’t mention anything about her being in town.”

Scully purses her lips, keeps her eyes on the map. She’s been hoping that he would not bring this up.

“She’s staying with me for a bit,” she says as casually as possible. “She got a hostess job downtown.”

“So she’s living in DC now?”

“Essentially.” She glances at the map. “Go right.” Mulder listens. 

“Where was she living before?”

“The West Coast. An assortment of places. She’s a bit of a wanderer.” She focuses on the map, hoping this will quell the conversation. Mulder doesn’t pick up this signal. He’s watching the road.

“She didn’t come around for your father’s funeral, did she? I don’t remember you talking about her.”

Scully frowns at the map. “No, she didn’t.” 

Missy and their father’s relationship had been strained for a number of years. While he didn’t necessarily criticize his eldest daughter for her life choices like their mother sometimes did, he couldn’t understand them, and that was somehow worse. Once he realized that Melissa wasn’t going to fulfill the dreams he had for her, he essentially stopped checking in with her. Not wanting to disappoint him any further, Melissa let them fall out of contact. 

This is different from their mother, who makes her opinion about Melissa’s decisions very clear. She’s under the impression that by being straightforward with her daughter, she can have some influence over her life. This has created an odd relationship between them: strained, but in frequent contact. Scully can relate.

“She wanted to be there, but we couldn’t reach her in time. It really upset her, she didn’t talk to my mom until my...incident.”

Mulder casts a sympathetic glance Scully’s way. “Ah.”

They merge onto I-29, their car joining the dozens of others already speeding toward some unknown destination. Mulder is reminded of a thought he often has while driving, and seeing as he’s made Scully share more than she wanted to, he decides to lighten the mood by saying it out loud. 

“Driving has always reminded me of a dance,” he says, making brief eye contact with his passenger.

Scully raises her eyebrows, amused by this sudden change of topic. “How so?”

“It’s just a bunch of strangers trying to match each other’s rhythm and not step on any feet.”

“You make it sound so romantic,” Scully replies, unconvinced. 

“I mean, it kind of is, isn’t it?...There’s so many songs about it.”

Scully laughs. “I take it back. If there’s so many songs about it, it must be true.”

Mulder smiles. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Speaking of music, Scully switches the radio on. A local country station blasts through the speakers, some song about drinking whiskey and pulling off a gravel road to watch stars from a truck bed.

“See?” Mulder jokes. “Height of romance.”

Scully turns it down, but doesn’t bother to change the station. Mulder now has the courage to ask the question he’s been holding onto. 

“So why is Melissa staying with you? Why not get her own place?”

The edges of Scully’s lips tilt down.  _ This again? _

“We get along well, so we thought it would be nice. Like being teenagers again.”

Mulder braces himself for an unpleasant reaction from his partner. “So it has nothing to do with your abduction?” 

Scully bites her lip. 

“Jesus, Mulder.”

“What? You don’t offer information unless I ask. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” He glances at her. She’s looking out the window.

“I’m okay,” she confirms. 

“You know, if you just elaborated a little bit, I wouldn’t have to ask such prying questions.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “You sound like Melissa.”

“Good. She knows exactly how to handle you.”

“ _ Handle _ me?” Scully straightens up in her seat. He waited until she was trapped to confront her. What a shitty move. 

“How to talk to you, I mean. You’re good at evading the point.”

“And you’re using your interrogation training against me,” she responds, clearly irritated.

“What do you mean?”

“You lightened the mood so I would trust you, then hit back with the toughest question yet. The one you really wanted an answer to.”

Mulder frowns. He had done this instinctively, not realizing that he was treating her like a suspect. 

“I’m sorry,” he responds without hesitation. “That wasn’t my intention.”

Scully crosses her arms. “Of course not,” she says curtly.

The drive continues in silence, Scully only speaking up to give him directions off the map. The country station is the only one with anything to say, the singers drawling about booze, babes, and of course,  _ driving. _ This frays Scully’s nerves. After one song too many about a pick-up truck, Scully switches the radio off. 

Mulder wants to make a joke, but now is really not the time. Instead, he focuses on what he’ll say to her when they get to the motel. She needs to be pushed to talk, he knows this and deep down, she does too. He pushed her too hard though, in a manipulative way, and it’s up to him to straighten this out. He knows Scully well enough to know that if there’s no trust, there’ll be no openness. But that trust has to be genuine, not coerced or manufactured. He’ll have to work on building that up again if he wants to know what truly ails her.

The rest of the drive takes about 45 minutes. They don’t even discuss the case. Scully gives directions, Mulder follows them, and they end up in tiny Aubrey, Missouri. It’s just after noon when Mulder cuts the engine in their motel parking lot. 

“You hungry?” he asks. 

Scully clicks off her seatbelt, reaches for the passenger door. “I’m fine.”

Mulder watches her get out. He pops the trunk so she can grab the suitcases, then meets her at the back of the car. She lugs her suitcase out of the trunk and sets it down beside her. She’s mad at him, but she’s waiting for him. Mulder takes this as a good sign. He grabs his carry-on and shuts the trunk. It thuds closed, shaking the car.

Scully looks up at him. He expects her to say something, then takes the chance when she doesn’t--

“Hey, I know I overstepped my boundaries earlier, and I’m sorry. I just...I was supposed to protect you, and I failed. I’m trying to make up for that by looking out for you now.”

The expression on Scully’s face is as neutral as ever. She extends the handle on her suitcase and turns toward the motel. 

She speaks to Mulder from over her shoulder. She’s not mad now, just insistent. “You didn’t fail.” She starts toward the entrance, rolling her suitcase along with her. Mulder jogs for a few strides to catch up with her. He wasn’t expecting her to take off like that.

“You became an X-file on my watch. That’s failure,” he responds.

“It’s my fault. Don’t guilt trip yourself.”

“Are you kidding me?” He freezes in the middle of the parking lot. Scully turns around and walks back to him, not wanting to have this argument here, or ever really. 

“Mulder…”

He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Did Skinner ever tell you that I handed him a resignation letter while you were lying unconscious in the hospital? When I was pretty sure you were gonna  _ die _ because of what I got you involved in?”

His eyes are dark, dark brown right now. Almost black, Scully notices. They’re not like this often. She sighs, then shakes her head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“If you had--” he leaves a space for the word ”--that would have been it for me. With the X-files, the FBI, all of it. I couldn’t save my sister, and if I had lost you, the chase just wouldn’t be worth it anymore.”

And so they’ve found themselves sharing a very sincere moment in the middle of a motel parking lot.

“That’s not true, Mulder,” Scully tells him, her voice grating. “You would have been more determined to find the truth.”

He shakes his head. “I would have imploded. Collapsed in on myself. You’re the only thing keeping me in check, and the fact is, we wouldn’t have made it this far in our search if it weren’t for you.”

Scully isn’t sure how to respond. She’s adamant that he would have continued on without her, that he would go far and wide to find answers, and that he would get justice for Samantha and her if they had both fallen victim to the conspiracy. She’s also aware that this is not what he wants to hear at the moment, and seeing as he’s being so complimentary, it would be smarter just to let it go. 

“Okay, Mulder. I believe you.” How often did he get to hear that, out of her mouth no less?

“Thank you,” he says, as if she’d just agreed that he would become king of the world, not that he would inevitably fall apart without her. This time, he leads the march toward the motel entrance. Scully follows in-step with him.

They’re heading up the entrance ramp when Mulder stops short yet again. Scully’s forehead bangs against his back. 

“Ow!” he jests, letting out a laugh as she turns to her. “You okay?”

Scully’s face has turned as red as her hair, but other than that, she’s fine. She nods. 

“I was going to ask if you ever heard what happened to Duane Barry.” 

At the sound of that name, the color flushes itself right out of Scully’s face. 

“Just that he died in custody.” Her voice is clipped.

“Oh.” Mulder scratches his chin, wishing that he hadn’t brought this up. Of course, this is Scully we’re talking about, and she’s not going to let him off easy.

“Why?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

An elderly couple scrambles up the ramp and walks around them, a bell ringing when they open the door. Mulder waits for it to shut before continuing.

“Well, um, he did die in custody. He stopped breathing shortly after I...uh, I squeezed his windpipe.”

Scully’s mouth drops open. “Mulder, you killed him?!” she hisses. 

He moves closer, pulls her farther from the doorway. “That’s a good example of what I mean by collapsing in on myself,” he whispers calmly.

This is so frank that Scully almost laughs. She stares up at him in (relieved) disbelief. “How did you--”

“I don’t know, and I’m not gonna question it.”

Scully nods. “That’s probably for the best.” Their eyes meet, a shared acknowledgement of what they have been through together, because of each other, and for each other. The reality of it is at once tragic and downright comical. Mulder laughs, and then Scully does too.

“You may have gotten more than you bargained for when you walked into that basement office,” Mulder quips. 

“Oh yes,” Scully confirms, her voice light and fluttery. “Oh yes.”

They make their way into the motel at last, ready for whatever the case has to offer. They may solve it, or not. Regardless, it is their line of work, and they will do it together.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Mulder and Scully begin their investigation in Aubrey, Scully finds herself sympathizing with the detective who found the bones more than she would prefer to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Includes a few lines of dialogue from season 2, ep 12 "Aubrey." Credit to Sara B. Charno who wrote that episode!!

Scully stares at the bones on the autopsy table in front of her. She has always been capable of separating her feelings from her work. Too good at it, even. But right now, looking at these bones that have been in the ground since before she was even born, all she can think about is how they once were a living, breathing person’s. A partner. A son. An FBI agent just like her. She had narrowly escaped a similar fate. How? What made her survive while this man became a bundle of bones to be poked and prodded? She knows she shouldn’t dwell on it, but sometimes she wonders if her luck would stop if her overthinking did.   
Mulder mentions the killer the detective was investigating. Three victims, all young women between twenty-five and thirty. Scully’s current demographic. He doesn’t say that part, of course, but Scully’s thinking it, and perhaps he is too. The word ‘sister’ was carved onto their chests, then painted on the wall with their blood. That could have been her.   
Nevermind that she wasn’t alive in 1942, let alone living in Missouri. Horrific, misogynistic crimes had been happening well before she was born, and they would happen well after. Scully had no doubt something like this could happen to her at any time. A petite, female FBI agent? She would be the perfect victim.  
She had been the perfect victim. And she survived! But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t victimized by all of it. Surviving doesn’t mean living. She is coming to terms with this. It is like going through it all over again.  
She lifts one of the rib bones, runs her fingers over it. The rubber gloves catch on a series of tiny cuts down the length of it. Were these a result of decades underground, or had these been inflicted before the detective bled to death? She shivers at the thought.  
“Scully?” Mulder’s voice anchors her back in reality.   
She turns around. “Yes?”  
“Are you cold?”  
He had seen. He grips the edges of his jacket, prepared to place it on her shoulders at a moment’s notice.  
She shakes her head. “No. I was just imagining being cut like this.” She points to the razor marks, each one a separate wound.   
Mulder winces. “Do you think that’s what killed him?”  
Scully turns the bone over in her hands. It has known pain, and she can almost feel the ghost of it in the marrow.   
“I don’t know,” she says, meaning it. “That would be a horrific way to die.”  
“Most ways are,” Mulder replies, not missing a beat. They stand there, this dead body adjacent to them, thinking about death, and life, and what it means to be a person. What a situation they have gotten themselves into.   
A few minutes later, they are looking at computerized scans of the bones when BJ, the detective who dug them up, enters. She asks Mulder a question about the case, but doesn’t seem to listen to his answer. It’s like she’s in a trance.  
Just as quickly as she arrived, she goes, excusing herself and staggering out of the room. Mulder and Scully exchange a glance like two gossiping high schoolers. Wordlessly, Scully follows after BJ. She finds her in the women's restroom rinsing her mouth. A pang of guilt circulates through Scully’s insides. She and Mulder have involved themselves in something that is, frankly, none of their business, but it’s too late to back out now.  
“Feeling better?” she asks, holding a clean paper towel out for BJ, who ignores it and pulls one from the dispenser herself.  
“I’m fine now.” This is all she offers.   
Scully has given this answer enough times to know that BJ is most definitely not fine. She considers her options: she could respect BJ’s hostility toward her, pretend she saw nothing, & return to Mulder, or she could probe further into the situation and try to comfort BJ. She knows the terror that BJ must be feeling.  
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” The words leave Scully’s mouth before she registers deciding to say them.   
The terror surfaces on BJ’s face. “Does it show?”  
“No, not yet,” Scully reassures, patting the detective on the shoulder. She will try to be the comfort she wishes she had at the moment. The comfort she knows she could have, but...  
BJ interrupts her train of thought--”Now I know why my mother only had one child. She told me about the nausea, but not about the nightmares.”  
Scully blinks. There’s that pang of guilt again. “Nightmares?”  
BJ nods. “It's always the same. I'm in a house, it feels familiar. There's a woman that's been hurt. There's a mirror... I see a man's reflection. I recognize his face, but I don't know it. What I remember most is the blood.” She looks up at Scully with desperate eyes. “There's a lot of blood.”  
Scully swallows. Hard. She can feel acid in her throat, the contents of her stomach threatening to follow BJ’s lead. She’s glad to be in the bathroom. Nightmares are not a particular indication of pregnancy, she knows this. But she also knows that changing hormone levels can trigger vivid, sometimes upsetting dreams--she had not connected those dots until just now.  
“Have you talked to anyone about these nightmares?” Scully asks.  
BJ shakes her head. “I'm sure it's something about the pregnancy. If anyone else knew I was pregnant…” She trails off in a way that makes Scully ache for all the women that have ever feared their own body, herself included. There could be no worse betrayal than one’s own body.  
“Brian would kill me if I told anyone,” BJ finishes. Her fear is evident in her voice. Scully packs as much sympathy as she can into her glance at BJ.   
“Thank you for opening up,” she says. “I’m sorry about your situation. Let me know if I can help.”  
BJ nods in acknowledgement, but doesn’t say anything. She lingers near the sink, as if waiting for the bell to dismiss her.  
Scully can feel her uncertainty. “I won’t tell anyone,” she reassures.  
BJ releases a breath. “Thank you. I need to...sort things out.”  
“I understand.” Scully offers her a soft smile. BJ reciprocates, then quietly exits the bathroom.  
Scully stands there a moment, hands in her pockets, heart in her throat. Then the queasy feeling passes, and she moves on.  
She returns to the office and takes a seat next to Mulder. He’s gobbling some cookies while the computer analyzes the cut patterns on the bones. It is interesting what their line of work does to them; how it desensitizes them to the most gruesome of wounds, the most horrific of situations. She sometimes forgets that ordinary people don’t play doctor on dead bodies for a living, or chase phantoms, or get abducted by--well, plenty of people claim that’s happened to them. And she doesn’t see why, considering how unpleasant it all was. Is. Maybe that’s why people talk about it, because they just want someone to believe them, someone to know, but Scully’s mind has never worked that way. It’s exactly the kind of thing she’d like to forget forever and never share with anyone else. How shameful to get caught up in myths like that.  
Mulder lifts an eyebrow, expecting a report on BJ.   
Scully shrugs. “Food poisoning.”  
“Yuck. Remind me not to have what she’s having,” he wisecracks.  
Scully’s teeth clamp down on her tongue. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, Mulder,” she says, a knowing edge to her voice. She wishes she could say the same about herself.   
\-------------------------------------------  
They return to their motel after sunset. Mulder walks Scully to her door- number 13, to the right of his--and parts ways with her chastely, telling her he’s planning to set his alarm for 7am and saying goodnight.   
“Night, Mulder,” she says, twisting her key in the lock and pushing hard against the door stuck from humidity. She casts one final smile his way before entering her room, shutting and locking the door behind her.  
Mulder turns his key in his room’s lock, but waits for Scully to disappear into the safety of her room before opening his own door. He is not going to lose her again.  
Relieved to be in a space of her own after a long day of traveling and consorting, Scully switches on the bedside lamp, illuminating the room. One queen-sized bed with a plaid comforter, a boxy TV with an antenna, a flimsy wooden desk, and a bathroom about three Scully steps deep. It is not much, these lodgings never are, but at least it’s not coming out of her paycheck. She pulls her badge from her jacket pocket and throws it on the bed. It does a backflip against the mattress. She shimmies off the jacket then, folding it up and setting it in the side of her suitcase reserved for the dirty laundry. One time Mulder saw the way she organized her suitcase and laughed. He’s more accustomed to throwing his worn clothes in a garbage bag...or just wearing them over again.   
The shoes come off next, lined up neatly by the door. She craves a shower. After spending the day with decades old bones, she is in need of a baptism.   
She flicks the bathroom light on, and the fluorescent bulb buzzes in protest. There’s no telling when this motel was built; the wall is supposed to be light blue, but entire sections of paint have chipped away into an aged white exterior. Fissures snake through nearly every square of the floor’s tile like they’re there for decoration. Scully looks for her reflection in the mirror and gets the blurry outline of a woman instead. The mirror is somehow permanently fogged.   
She ponders the science of that while she pulls back the shower curtain and turns the knob for hot water. It spurts noisily out of the faucet, interrupting her peace. Speaking of interrupting her peace...she remembers that she forgot to leave Missy the number for the motel. She is not used to someone keeping such close tabs on her. She switches off the water and heads for the phone.  
She dials the number, her own number--now her sister’s too--and waits. One ring, then another, then Missy’s steady voice.  
“Hello?”  
“Hi, Missy. It’s me. I forgot to leave the number, I’m sorry.”  
“So I take it you’re not coming home tonight?” She knew her sister never was, but she’ll milk it anyway.   
“No, we got a motel.”  
“You already had the reservations, didn’t you?” Melissa inquires. “Or else how would you leave the number?”  
Scully rolls her eyes, though she knows her sister can’t see it. Missy can probably sense it anyway.   
“We did, but we would have cancelled them if we didn’t need to stay. It looks like we’re taking the case.”  
“Is it an interesting one, or can you not say cause it’s vital to the security of the nation or something,” Melissa teases.  
“It’s pretty freaky, but nothing really supernatural. Just your run of the mill humans hurting other humans.”  
“Hmm...I thought the suspect had to be like, a werewolf, to qualify as an X-file.”  
Scully smiles. “Well, it’s like Scooby-Doo. You always think the culprit is some crazy creature, but then you unmask them and it’s just a cranky old man.”  
“Even worse!” Missy quips.  
Scully laughs. Her sister’s right. At this point, she’d be relieved to find out that the worst atrocities of humanity were not committed by humans after all, but by some beast with no morals, just instinct. Maybe she’d feel less guilty if she didn’t have to atone for all the sins she’s seen. If they weren’t the sins of humanity.   
“Anyway, you’ve got this number now, so just ask for room 13 if you need me. Or room 14 if you want to prank call Mulder, I don’t care. I’m about to hop in the shower, but did you have a good day?”  
“Uh yeah, work was busy and I just got home a little bit ago. I’m waiting on some pad thai from that restaurant you suggested. Probably gonna veg out, watch some Golden Girls, maybe do a face mask.”  
“You’re living a life of luxury,” Scully murmurs.  
“Very much so. How was your day?”  
“It was...good.” Her voice rises unevenly between the words.  
“That’s a ringing endorsement.”   
Scully can hear the hollow noise of Missy twirling the phone cord around her finger.  
“The first day on a case is always a bit overwhelming,” she assures. “We’ll get through it.”  
“I’m sure you will,” Missy replies with a flat voice, not at all impressed by her sister’s answer.   
“We always do.” There’s a note of optimism in her voice. The statement is more of a prayer than a reassurance.   
“Well, come home safely, okay? I’m not used to sleeping in a big city by myself.”  
“I’ll be home as soon as possible,” Scully says, not holding herself to any safe returns.   
“You’d better.” The cheekiness in Missy’s voice takes Scully back to the conversations they had when Scully had just moved to college and would recount the titillating tales of living in a co-ed dorm. Having never had such an experience, Melissa would live vicariously through her stories, and Scully would realize that her sister would make much better use of the situation than she ever did. “Love you. Bye.”  
“Bye, Missy,” she says with some weariness. She puts the phone in the receiver, closes her eyes, and wonders how many times she’s uttered that exact phrase. Twenty-nine years worth, so the number’s got to be high.  
She returns to the bathroom, feeling significantly grungier than just a few minutes ago. She repeats the routine with the water, slipping off her pants and blouse as the room steams up. By the time her bare skin hits the water, sweat is sliding down the ugly walls.  
Usually the motels they stay in don’t have very warm water, so this is a treat. She doesn’t usually take hot showers, seeing them as wasteful somehow. Maybe she subconsciously doesn’t want to increase her water bill. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t apply right now, and every muscle in Scully’s body softens as the water runs down it. Touch. How many times had she been touched today? Surely this is one of the only instances featuring a force with any life in it. It's the most intimate too. She ravishes in it.   
There’s a noise, or rather, a sudden absence of noise, and Scully realizes that Mulder’s shower is on the other side of the wall and he has just turned off the water. She pictures him on the other side of the tile, naked and dripping wet. Slick all over. If only she had x-ray eyes... This is what partners do, isn’t it? She has goosebumps despite the temperature of the water.   
She blinks her eyes closed, holds her breath, and tilts her face toward the showerhead. Baptism. Rebirth. New beginnings. The chance to make up for missed opportunities.  
She carries this energy with her through the rest of the night. Through buttoning her silk pajamas from hips to collarbone, through towel-drying her hair because she left her blow dryer for Melissa, through flipping the channels and finding nothing but reruns she never cared to watch in the first place, and through dozing off with her hair cascading off the pillow. Not all nights are as delightfully simple as this.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dubious figure from Scully's life visits her in a nightmare; Mulder tries to distract her with breakfast and a philosophical conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continuing with s2, ep 12, Aubrey.

She’s entering the motel room again, just as she did only hours before. This time, something is wrong. She hears it as soon as she closes the door. Ragged breathing, like a dog worn out from a walk. She doesn’t have a dog, and she sure as hell hasn’t just taken one for a walk. 

“Mulder?” she asks the darkness. She tries to think: was he just with her? Did he enter his own room, like she did hers? She cannot remember. For the life of her, she cannot remember.

The room’s silence is the unwanted answer to her question. A shadow moves in the darkness. Scully reaches for her gun with one hand and the bedside lamp with the other. Her hand slides over her belt, comes up empty. Her gun, what happened to it? She cannot remember this either. An act of faith will have to do. She sucks in a breath, clicks the light on. 

There’s BJ, illuminated. Scully’s mind races to fill in the inconsistencies. This isn’t the BJ who left her in the bathroom earlier. Fear has written itself on her face and frozen her too. This phantom woman’s stomach bulges under her sweatshirt. She is heavily pregnant and... _ bleeding _ . That’s what it is. Blood, sickeningly red, trickling down BJ’s front like she’s starring in a low budget horror film. 

“BJ!” Scully rushes toward her without a second thought. But BJ puts out her hands, backs toward the bathroom. 

“No, Agent Scully, don’t!” she pleads. “He got me. It’s too late. He’ll get you too if you don’t leave.”

As Scully gets closer, she sees that the collar of BJ’s sweatshirt has been ripped. Beneath it, letters are inked in blood quite clearly across BJ’s chest: SISTER. Just like the crime scene photos of those women years ago.

Scully stops moving so that BJ will hold still. “Who, BJ? Who did this?”

“Him, he did.” A hand emerges from the shadowy bathroom, grips BJ by the rip in her collar, and slams her into the doorframe. A fresh spurt of blood glides down her and puddles at her feet. “Go, Scully, go!” she cries. “ _ Please.” _

But Scully won’t go, she could never abandon a situation like this. She moves closer to the bathroom, desperately wishing she had her gun and trying to piece together a back-up plan that might get both her and BJ out safely. 

She puts on the most intimidating voice she possesses. “Let go of her  _ now! _ ” 

“Let me have you and it’s a done deal.” The hand steps out of the shadows, becoming a body, becoming a nightmare. It is not possible, and yet it is happening. The delusional eyes of Duane Barry stare into hers. 

Scully loses the ability to breath, to scream, to do anything except fear death. A thought pings in her brain. There’s something she does remember that revives her.  _ Duane Barry’s dead.  _ Mulder killed him. He told her that very day. Mulder wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, she is sure of it.

She is not quite sure what this means for the situation. She throws her shoulders back, lifts her head high. She is the survivor, and she will be victorious this time.

“No. You can’t have me, or BJ either. Go back to hell.” She steps toward BJ, holds out her hand. Duane’s fist is still clamped on BJ’s sweatshirt, right over her collarbone. She will not move.

“Duane Barry can have whatever he wants,” the man’s gritty voice says. “Duane Barry got eternity.” 

“Eternal damnation,” Scully growls. “Now give it up.”

Duane Barry laughs. It’s hollow, devoid of any real emotion. The laughter of a dead man. He pushes BJ away from him, releases her shirt. She catapults into Scully, who steps in front of her like a shield. 

“Go, BJ,” Scully orders. 

“I can’t leave you.” BJ’s voice is the shakiest it’s ever been.

“You’ll bleed out. Go.”

Scully doesn’t hear her leave. She glances behind her, and BJ is not there anymore. It is just her and Duane now, like in her apartment, and the car, and though she doesn’t remember it, the field too. Mulder tells her he caught Duane there. That her necklace was in the trunk, and her blood. But not her.

She snaps back into the moment. This is something she will remember, and she needs to be present for it. Duane moves toward her. A gun appears in his hand.  _ Her gun. _ Her weapon, somehow in his hands. He didn’t pick it up or pull it from his belt, it  _ appeared. _ Just as abruptly as BJ disappeared. 

“You think they’ll let you into heaven looking like that?” he sneers. He’s coming closer and closer.

“That’s not for me to say,” Scully replies, holding her ground.

“I’m not talking hypothetically,” Duane’s voice booms through the room. “Look at yourself!” 

She’s not sure why, but she listens; maybe he’s an alien, maybe that’s why they kept coming after him, maybe they just wanted him back. It sure feels like he’s controlling her mind. 

She looks down and immediately dissociates. This is not her. This is a trail of blood. How could someone call this a body?

SISTER is scribbled across her chest too. She doesn’t have to check to know. She has fallen victim, just as she predicted.

And then...she lurches out of bed, the cheap motel sheets strewn across the floor in her wake. She is on her knees against the cracked tile before she can put two and two together. Her stomach contents spill out of her like they’ve been waiting on a cue. If this is confession, the porcelain is her priest.

When her stomach can’t possibly spew any more, she flushes the toilet, then crawls over to the towel rack and pulls down her still drying towel. The tile has made creases on her hands. She lays the towel against her cheek, then rests her head against the edge of the toilet. This is what her simple night has come to.

She stays in this position while her strength finds its way back. She is just about to doze off when someone knocks on her door. She sighs, lifts her head, puts it back down again. At the sound of the second knock, she glances into the other room. Stray beams of light stream through the edges of the curtains. She hadn’t had time to glance at the clock in her mad dash to the bathroom.  _ It’s morning already. _

This suspicion is confirmed by Mulder’s concerned voice on the other side of the door. “Scully?”

She pushes herself up off the floor, hangs the towel back on the rack. “I’m here,” she calls. It comes out strained and raspy.

She shuffles toward the door, unsure of how to explain this situation. The clock reads 7:18. Mulder makes up for all the times he’s late to the J. Edgar Hoover building by getting an early start during their travels. She’s aware of this and usually beats him to the punch. Not today. She wonders why her alarm didn’t go off, then realizes she never set it. 

She unlocks the door and opens it a crack, embarrassed by her silk pajamas and undoubtedly messy hair.

“Hey, sorry. I forgot to set my alarm.” Her voice is still not right.

“Are you okay?” His tone indicates that she must not be.

“I had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“You don’t look so good.” He lays a palm on the door, pushes it open to get a better view. Scully’s always been pale, but usually it reminds him of marble, like a statue of a Greek goddess. Right now she’s looking more like a ghost. Or like she’s seen one. “Can I come in?”

She closes the door so that just her face is visible. “I have to get dressed,” she protests. “Then we can get going. We’re meeting BJ at 9, right?”

“We have time,” Mulder insists, putting his hand on the door so she can’t shut it without smashing his fingers. 

“If we leave early enough, we can get breakfast on the way.” 

Mulder wonders who she is trying to pander to, then lets go of the door. He knows how this goes. He’ll let her off easy now, she’ll be more willing to talk later. Their version of compromise. 

“Okay, fine. You get ready, and we’ll stop for breakfast.”

“Great.” She presses her lips into a thin line that he thinks is supposed to be a smile. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“I’ll start the car.”

She nods after him, watches him go. Their partnership, like all relationships, is an act of give and take. She gets the feeling that she has been taking too much lately and giving very little back. He deserves better, she knows this. It does not make her feel good. 

\------------------------

Their car rattles along Aubrey’s main street. It’s classic Americana with narrow sidewalks, quaint storefronts, and altogether too much traffic for such a small town. While sitting at a redlight, Mulder taps the steering wheel absentmindedly and takes the opportunity to do some sight-seeing. He looks past Scully and notices a sign in the window of the building next to them claiming that it is an “authentic 1950s mom-and-pop diner.” “Best in Aubrey!” it brags. He smirks, then checks his mirror and enters the right-turn lane. Scully, who had been watching the light, glares at him.

“What are you doing?”

He takes the right turn. “You promised breakfast, remember?” He pulls into the small lot behind the cafe. “Whaddya say we go back in time? I can’t picture you in a poodle skirt, Scully.”

“Good.” Her bluntness makes Mulder laugh. His hearty chuckle is chicken soup to her soul. She tries to power through the flutter in her heart. “Is this place gonna have 1950s prices too? Cause if not, you’re paying.”

Mulder parks, cuts the engine. “I’ll take the risk.”

“And I’ll hold you to that.” She unclicks her seatbelt and opens the passenger door. Her heels hit the pavement with fervor. She’s trying to shake off the nightmare by putting on an extra tough, confident exterior. Fake it til you make it, right? She struts away from the car, hears Mulder click it locked behind her. How often is  _ he _ the one lagging behind? She waits for him at the sidewalk, watching as he jogs toward her a bit like he’s running down the beach on Baywatch. She can’t tell if he’s doing the sexy slow motion thing on purpose or if that’s just his natural state. 

“Do you think they’ll have a jukebox?” he asks, amused with himself. “Cause I forgot to bring my roll of quarters.”

“That’s too bad,” Scully intones, humoring him as she often does.

As he falls into step beside her, Scully is tempted to touch him. Nothing inappropriate, just a gesture that says, we are here walking together. She can’t think of an innocent way for a woman to do this to a man, and this annoys her. After all, he does this to her all the time, and she’s pretty positive it’s the only thing keeping her from becoming completely touch-starved. Sometimes he guides her by the small of her back, sometimes it’s more like a gentle hand on her elbow or shoulder. It reminds her of when she was a little girl and her father would let her take the lead in a crowd, whether it be a department store or a 4th of July parade. It built her confidence, having to cut a path for herself through what felt like skyscrapers of people. She could feel her father there the whole time, and so she knew she was safe. Not so easy these days. 

To Scully’s left, Mulder wonders what his partner’s love language is. Not that he’s read a book on love languages or anything. I mean, it was just the one time. Now it sits on his shelf and gathers dust with all his other books! Nothing odd about that. He did manage to take the quiz in the back of the book before he put it up, though. He got mostly C’s, which meant that his love language was physical touch. This was not surprising to him, though not anything he’d ever thought deeply about either. Maybe it stems from the fact that his father was never very affectionate? Who can say, really?...It’s times like this he wishes he didn’t have a psychology degree.

“Hey, Scully,” he pipes up, figuring the topic can’t hurt. “Have you heard of the five love languages?”

“You mean the stupid self-help book?” she goads. “Yeah.”

He opens the diner door, a chirpy bell announcing their arrival. He holds it open while Scully steps into a recreation of a by-gone era complete with a long red counter with retro barstools, black-and-white tile on the floors and the walls, and, yes, a jukebox. Mulder points to it and glances at Scully, who simply shakes her head. Behind the counter, a waitress with pin curls and an apron dress addresses them.

“Welcome in, folks. Seat yourselves anywhere you’d like.”

Mulder thumbs toward the counter (because how else would you get the whole 50s diner experience?) but Scully, who has finally found an occasion to touch him, lays a hand on his bicep and pulls him over to a red leather booth. 

They settle in, their eyes scanning the laminated menus and realizing that these are not, in fact, 1950s prices. 

“Have you read it?” Mulder asks.

“I’m reading it right now, Mulder,” Scully says, stating the obvious.

“No, I mean the love languages book.”

“We’re still on this?”

Mulder lays his menu flat on the table, lifts his hands in surrender. “I just thought it would be an interesting thing to talk about.”

Scully sets her menu down too. “I’ve never read it, but you know who did and loved it? Melissa. She told me all about it.”

“Oh, really? What’s hers?”

“Uh, I think it was acts of service. Is that one?”

Mulder nods. “It’s acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, or physical touch.”

The waitress comes over with a steaming pot of coffee and asks if they’re interested. They both nod, and she fills two mugs to the brim. The liquid shivers as Scully blows on it. 

“What’s yours?” she asks over the rim of her mug. “I’m assuming you’ve read the book.”

“Read the book  _ and _ taken the quiz,” Mulder brags, topping it off with a smile. “I got physical touch.”

“Nice.” Scully files that information away for later. “Do you think that’s accurate?”

He shrugs. “It’s not wrong.”

“How can something be not right, but not wrong?”

His eyes, a caramel brown right now, brush over her. “I don’t know, Scully, how  _ can _ something be not right, but not wrong?” he challenges.

She swallows, understanding what he is getting at. Some things are hard to justify. To yourself, to others. But when you take all the thinking out of it and just rely on the feeling...there are certain things that refuse to be resisted. She knows. She has tried to resist, and the universe has raised hell.

She rests her hands on the table. “What would I get?”

“What do I look like, a psychologist?” Mulder teases. 

Scully giggles, looks at her hands. She disregards object permanence and figures that if she can’t see him, he must not see her. He doesn’t say anything, so she takes this to mean he doesn’t notice how most of the blood in her body has rushed to her face.

He does, and he thinks it’s cute how she’s at mercy of her trivial embarrassments. She reddens at the smallest things: dropping her keys, forgetting her jacket, adding up the total on a restaurant tab incorrectly. It’s refreshing actually, the way her feelings show on her face, especially since she so rarely puts them into words. She’s a beacon of sincerity in his otherwise insincere life. 

She gathers herself enough to look him in the eyes. “Quiz me. You’ve read the book, so quiz me.”

Mulder mouth has gone dry for reasons he cannot quite explain. “Okay.” He rips open a packet of sugar, pours it into his coffee. He doesn’t even want it, he just needs something to do with his hands. 

“Um…” he can’t look at her. “Which sounds more fulfilling to you: being served breakfast in bed, or being given, say, a box of chocolates, as an anniversary gift?”

“Breakfast in bed. But the chocolate would be good too.” She sips her coffee while she watches him process that.

“Okay...would you rather hear someone say ‘I love you’ or have them show it by holding hands or putting their arm around you?”

She has to think about this one. Her gut reaction is neither, frankly. Both are positive things, she wouldn’t be mad at either of them, but she’s looking for something more. Something deeper than words spoken millions of times or public displays of affection. She wants love that transcends the ordinary. Love that is bigger than love. 

“The second one, I guess. But only under the right circumstances.”

“You have provisions to your love, do you?”

“Yes,” she says without wavering. “I do.”

Mulder wonders if the waitress might come over and defuse the growing tension before it manifests elsewhere. Like in a place that would make the situation incredibly embarrassing for him. 

Scully lets her gaze fall over him. The sight of Mulder on the opposite side of a restaurant booth is one that has become very familiar to her, but it’s never any less satisfying. She holds on to the consistencies in her life now more than ever. This is one of them. 

She follows his eye line toward the counter. “So do you have another question?” she asks, a purposeful break in his concentration.

He comes back to her. There are so many things he could say to her right now. So goddamn many. Following the theme of the morning, he picks one that feels neither right, nor wrong. 

“Do you really care about your love language, or are you just humoring me?”

“I’m always humoring you, Mulder.” 

Mulder chuckles. She smiles at her own joke and at the fact that it made him laugh. She literally  _ was _ humoring him. 

“But I am actually curious,” she clarifies. “I don’t see how an informal love language quiz could truly have detrimental effects.”

“Well, clearly. I’m the one coming up with it, so it’s foolproof.”

“No, it’s just so unscientific that I could never take it seriously enough to let it dictate my decisions.”

Mulder rubs his chest like he’s just been shot in the heart. “Ouch.”

“It’s a cute metric, nothing more,” she says lightly. “But keep going, two questions can’t be enough to determine my result.”

Mulder smiles. She’s a tricky one, his Scully. He opens his mouth, intent on getting into the deep stuff when the waitress finally shows up with her notepad and pencil.

“What can I get y’all?” she asks with phony cheer. 

Scully orders first. Always. “I’ll have the oatmeal with berries. Just the small bowl, and that’s all.”

The waitress nods, doesn’t even bother to scribble the order down. “And for you, sir?”

“I’ll have the scrambled eggs and bacon. And can I get that in 1950s prices?” He can’t resist.

The waitress chuckles, but in a tired way like she’s definitely heard that before. “You invent a time machine, then you sure can.”

Mulder nods, wonders if he might one day be able to do that. He doesn’t say this out loud, of course, and the waitress takes up their menus. 

Scully turns her attention back to Mulder with the look of an embarrassed teenager. 

“You just had to make that joke, didn’t you?”

He slurps his coffee. “Yes I did. And here’s your next question: have you ever really been in love?”

Scully’s jaw tightens.  _ Has she? _

“I don’t know, Mulder,” she remarks, weary. “What is love, exactly?”

She doesn’t mean for him to give a legitimate answer. As far as she’s concerned, that’s about as unanswerable as questions get.

He leans his elbows on the table, gets the twinkle in his eye that shows up when he’s stimulated. “In my mind, it’s defined by the extremes. The limits you would push. How far out of your comfort zone would you go for the person? What’s the most dangerous thing you'd be willing to do for them? That’s what love is to me. Going out of yourself and out of safety for the comfort of someone else.”

Scully is rendered speechless by how concise this explanation is. He’s given it some thought, definitely. But what he’s come up with...it’s like he verbalized the feeling she’s been looking for her whole life. She’s never understood why she had never fallen, what with the fairly decent guys who have prostrated themselves at her feet. She had never been willing to  _ die _ for them. Or to forsake any piece of herself for them, really. That was the problem. That’s what makes this--she never thinks of it as anything but  _ this, _ it’s a feeling too daunting to force into the confines of language--different. Before, she wasn’t willing to change when it was demanded. Now she is not asked to, but chooses it at her own will. She wants to, because it doesn’t feel like changing, it feels like coming closer to her authentic self. 

“That’s a very philosophical answer,” she says, trying not to let on that her understanding of life was just sharpened. “I like it.” 

“Mhmm.”  _ He wants to. God, he wants to.  _ He wants to do everything with her, every activity in the whole world. Even the unpleasant ones. Maybe that’s another symptom of love. 

He clears his throat. The tension has clearly built. He tries to counter it by thinking of the way she looked this morning when she opened that door. Like a caved-in version of herself, like someone had scooped out the substance. She was hurting, and she wasn’t sharing her pain. This hurt him. Yet she wasn’t willing to talk about it, she wasn’t ready to take the risk. He had just given her his definition of love, and she agreed. Yet her actions are not representative of it. Clearly they aren’t in the same place. He can do nothing about this. 

“You know, forget love languages,” Mulder declares. “They  _ are  _ stupid.” You either love, or you don’t love; that’s the part he keeps to himself. It’s a choice you have to make. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully deals with the trauma of her nightmare when she and Mulder meet BJ in the park; a migraine leads Scully to breakdown to her sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, a few lines of dialogue from season 2, episode 12 "Aubrey" written by Sara B Charno.

The rest of their breakfast passes without fanfare. After their conversation about love languages, neither feels like diving into particularly deep topics. Mulder spends their meal providing commentary on the songs other customers picked off the jukebox, turning Scully into a captive audience who occasionally nods, chuckles, or otherwise utters a phrase of approval. It’s not that they’re bored of each other, but that they feel they should preserve their energy for the taxing conversations sure to come along with the case. The electricity between them lingers in the air, waiting for a match to spark it. When the waitress asks if they want to split the bill, Mulder gallantly insists that he will take care of it, then pulls out the Bureau credit card with a wink his partner’s way. To Scully, his wink feels like a lighter flaring into flame. A brief moment of blaze, there and then gone again.  _ One day _ , she swears to herself,  _ one day she will let him ignite her heart.  _

Back in the car, they buckle up and reacclimate themselves with 1994. The local country music station hums in the background, too low to make out any lyrics. It’s just a few stoplights to the park, not even long enough to get through an entire song.

They find BJ at a picnic table nestled among Aubrey’s fall colors. She notices them first, waves them over. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Mulder says as he and Scully take a seat across from the detective.

Scully is struck by reality’s intrusion on the version of BJ she met in her nightmare. BJ is not heavily pregnant; she does not even show. She’s not covered in blood either, but looking polished in a pantsuit. Yet the sight of her conjures up vivid images from the dream, ones that Scully hoped would stay hidden in her psyche forever. The resolute darkness of Duane Barry’s eyes, like his soul had been sucked out of him. The way droplets of blood splattered when he pulled BJ by the collar. And the image of her own body, how it had been desecrated and she hadn’t felt a thing.  _ She felt nothing. _

“How are you, BJ?” she asks, her voice stiffer than intended.

BJ rests her hands on the wooden table. “I’m okay.” Then-- “I’ve made some decisions.”

Scully nods, not wanting to pry. The three of them sit with the silence. Sometimes this is all you can do. Her courage gathered, BJ looks to Mulder. 

“I don’t know if Agent Scully told you, but I’m pregnant. It’s Tilman’s. It’s made things...complicated.”

“I’m sure,” Mulder replies, not particularly moved by this announcement. 

“I don’t think it will impact the case in any way, but I wanted to be open with you. Staying quiet about it was only making the situation tougher.”

“Well, thanks for sharing.”

Scully shoots Mulder a look, as if to chastise his blase attitude toward BJ’s courage. He doesn’t see it, which makes her feel oddly guilty, like she had talked about him behind his back. 

Across the park, a little girl plays with her dog. They run through a pile of leaves together, and she takes a tumble. 

“Ow!” the girl exclaims loud enough to be heard throughout the park. BJ stands up, her gaze snapping toward the sound. Scully turns, fighting the urge to join BJ. The girl’s mother bends to check the girl for injury and seeing that she’s okay, sets her on her feet. BJ exhales, joins the agents back at the table.

“The mothering instinct,” BJ monologues. “I've been feeling it a lot lately. I used to hate it when my mother hovered over me. I swore I'd never be like her.”

Scully’s throat tightens. She felt the gravitational pull too. I mean, she’s always liked kids, but she’s not sure she would be a good mother and so she’s tried not to think much about it. Certainly her situation is unfavorable for motherhood. What kind of life would it be for a kid to have their mother gone all the time? She knows what it’s like to tuck herself into bed without a goodnight kiss and a bedtime story...to feel like an afterthought in a parent’s life. It made her push herself harder, trying to shed the inadequacy her father must have seen in her. And still she fell short. Is it all in her head, this fledgling maternal instinct? Or is it a sign of changing brain chemistry?

“I think we all feel that way at some point or another,” Mulder says. For a moment, Scully thinks he’s read her mind. She’s about to ask him whether there’s such thing as a paternal instinct when BJ continues on--

“My father was a cop. A good cop. That's all I ever wanted to be. He'd say what we're doing here is nonsense. That you can't solve a crime from a dream.”

Scully is somewhat relieved to know that she’s not alone in failing to measure up to a father’s expectations. This is not the point of the conversation, but this is what her mind latches on to. Her own father felt that the X-Files was a waste of time, and she could never put into words why the work was so fulfilling to her. It’s not medicine; the results aren’t as obvious. Yet she can’t help but feel like she and Mulder are tuning into a rarely heard frequency, listening to its message, and passing it on. Little by little that will change the world, won’t it?

“Well, I've often felt that dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask,” Mulder offers, rising to meet the gravity of the moment. Scully wonders what question her nightmare was answering. She shudders at the thought.

\---------

Her skull feels like it’s being cut in half with a chainsaw, there is no other way to put it. She’s lying stretched out on her motel bed, a washcloth over her eyes, praying the pain away. Migraines aren’t a common occurrence for her, but she recalls all the times her mother would turn off the television, pull the curtains, and lay flush in her recliner in an attempt to ward off the pain. As little as she was, Scully would pull a step stool over to grab a glass from the cabinet, then fill it with water and bring it to her mother like a dog itching for a treat. She’d get a ‘thank you’ from her mom’s quiet, steady voice and sometimes a pat on the head, but nothing she could subsist on. She always wished for a little more to fill the deficit in herself. Now she understood. Pain chips away at your capacity for love.

What had started as a dull roar now felt more like the scream of a banshee. It came on suddenly around 4 while she and Mulder were reviewing the evidence of the 1942 murders. Their day had been pretty slow, one of paperwork and manila folders and bureaucracy. Not a lot of progress on the case. It’s as if her brain weren’t working hard enough, and so decided to punish her by making work impossible. She let on nothing of her plight until the way back to the motel when she leaned her head against the window and Mulder asked if she was okay. She responded nonchalantly, saying it was just a headache, and he in his savior complex offered to stop for Aspirin, but she insisted she had some in her suitcase. She did--a bottle with only two left--and she took them both. So far they’ve done nothing to combat the pain. 

It occurs to her that her ardent desire to avoid coming off as a damsel in distress doesn’t exactly mesh with Mulder’s tendency to be the hero. What is she to make of that? Nothing, not in her current state of mind.

She lies there, wonders if it’s reached a late enough hour to change into her pajamas. She can’t deal with the monotony of the shower tonight, not even if Mulder’s on the other side. She turns, glances at the digital alarm clock. 8:09pm. Certainly that’s appropriate pajama time, right? She can never be sure that Mulder won’t come knocking on her door with a new interpretation of the evidence for her to shoot down or a theory somehow more outlandish than his original. She likes that they keep each other on their toes, but tonight that’s not where she wants to be.

Her head berates her for sitting up. She figures that if that’s wishful thinking, changing clothes will be too, so she lays right back down. She has gotten very used to ending up back where she started.

Seeing as modern medicine is failing her, she decides to try meditation. Missy swears by it, but Scully doesn’t see the benefit of willingly turning off your brain. She can hear her sister now: “It’s not about turning off your brain, it’s about transcending your thoughts and being present with the world.”  _ Since when am I not present with the world _ , she always wants to reply. She can’t afford not to be present with the world.

But the older sister always has some semblance of sway over the younger one, so Scully closes her eyes and listens to the nothingness of the room around her. Well, it’s not exactly nothing, but nearly so. The mini-fridge, which she doesn’t dare touch even if the bill isn’t her responsibility, hums like it has something to prove. The remaining leaves on the trees in the parking lot rustle with the wind. In the adjacent room, Mulder’s TV is on. She can hear the droning chitter-chatter of sports commentators. Baseball, probably. That’s played in the fall, right?

She slips out of active listening and into mindless musing on her lack of sports expertise. Her father was never a sports junkie himself, but her brothers were. She was often made the referee of their wrestling matches or t-ball games, having been deemed more impartial than Melissa. And yet her understanding of plays and pitches and batting averages never progressed from there. She could name all 206 bones in the body in alphabetical order, but she couldn’t tell you what 3rd down meant. Usually she doesn’t care, but at the moment, this is making her indescribably sad.

Overcome by her isolation, she grabs the phone off hook, dials her own number. Melissa picks up right before it stops ringing.

“Hello?”

“Missy…” she doesn’t know it’s going to happen until she opens her mouth and tears fling themselves down her face.

“Dana, what’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you safe?” Missy’s voice is concerned but controlled, like a 911 operator. 

“I-I’m okay,” Scully manages, in probably the least convincing delivery ever.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the motel. Mulder and I are safe, we’re okay,” she stammers. 

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Melissa says with utter calm. 

“My head is  _ pounding, _ Missy, and I know mom used to get migraines, but I’ve never felt anything like this before--” Her voice catches, a sob slips out. “And I’m  _ scared _ , Missy. Something’s wrong with me.”

“It sounds like you need medical attention, honey.” Melissa always knows when to slip in a term of endearment. “Can Mulder take you to the hospital?”

“No, no, it’s not like that.” She squeezes her eyes shut, sees stars. She hopes Mulder can’t hear her crying. The embarrassment of hurting is almost worse than the hurt itself. She pulls the bed sheet over her head like some over-dramatic teenager. She wouldn’t be able to look Mulder in the eye if he heard this next part. 

She sniffles. “I’m six days late, and I’m  _ never  _ late, and I can’t be pregnant unless…” She wonders what would happen if she just stopped the sentence there and never spoke of it again. Could she do that? Would Melissa mind? 

She lets the bottom drop out from under her. “...unless they  _ did something _ to me.” The words are barely audible, she hates to have them on her tongue. Worse still, she’s not even the subject in her own sentence. She’s the object, of course. 

She hears Missy take what she’s deemed “a cleansing breath.” Then--”Can you come home? Tonight, tomorrow morning?”

“I...What would I tell Mulder?” Her tears have stopped flowing, but her brokenness still lives in her voice. 

“Anything. That I locked myself out of the apartment, that it’s mom’s birthday, maybe  _ the truth. _ That man will listen to whatever you say. He’s not gonna stop you.”

“Well, I have to tell the FBI something.” 

“Say you have a family emergency. Or that you’re experiencing trauma from work-related events. You don’t owe them anything, Dana.”

Scully knows this, but could never operate as if she actually believed it. The FBI is her job, her duty, her  _ choice. _ How can she be up in arms about something she wished upon herself? 

She takes as deep a breath as the pain in her head will allow. “I’ll fly out tomorrow morning.”

“Call me with the deets before you take off. I’ll pick you up.”

“Okay.” Scully feels a rush of safety, of being held & supported. “Thank you,” she breathes. Missy has saved her from herself.

“You’re welcome. And Dana…?”

“Yes?”

“We’re gonna figure this out. Whatever it is, we’re gonna figure it out.”

Scully flutters her eyelids shut, feels the temptation of tears at the back of them. “I know...Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Missy echoes. “Get some rest, and try not to worry. I’ll see you in the morning.” 

Scully wonders what gene her sister has that gives her such a distinct ability to say the right thing every time. She wishes she hadn't missed that boat. How much easier would life be? 

She notices that Missy has refused to hang up first. “Goodnight, Missy,” she says into the phone.

“Goodnight, Dana. Sleep well.” Her words are a balm to the soul. 

Scully puts the phone back on the hook, feeling like Missy just put hope back in her vocabulary. Hope or belief? Which is stronger?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in DC, Missy helps Scully get to the bottom of what's plaguing her. As Scully's journey gets a bit clearer, Missy drops a bombshell about her own life.

Scully’s stomach clenches as the plane touches down on the runway, jostling she and the rest of the passengers around like pawns in its game. Only forty-eight hours ago, she and Mulder had lifted off toward another mystery, another puzzle daring them to solve it. Now she is back, knowing scarcely more than she did then, with a mystery of her own to solve. She is forever chasing ghosts, and trying not to become one. 

As the winged giant rolls into its gate, Scully glances out the window. Thick clouds blanket the sky, an unending greyness rolling out over the city as far as the eye can see. So much for  _ there’s no place like home. _ She’s been realizing lately that home is a feeling, not a location. Sometimes she feels like she needs a map to navigate her own apartment, or like everyone in DC knows some language she never learned. Well,  _ almost _ everyone. There are a couple people who speak the same language as her.

And she’s about to see one of them now. The crowd of passengers--mostly suits who had sleepless nights-- stand up in their rows, ready to file out into the bureaucratic machine. The man on the outside of Scully’s row opens the overhead compartment and pulls down his bag and the carry-ons of Scully and the woman next to her. Scully thanks him demurely. She can’t remember the last time someone other than Mulder did that for her.

As they fall into line and shuffle off the plane, Scully wonders what her life will look like next time she boards a plane. With any luck, this will all be a fluke and she’ll be heading back to Aubrey tomorrow. Then again, even if it isn’t a fluke, she’ll still probably join Mulder back in Aubrey. She knows herself.

What would she say to him, then? Having to admit she lied about her reason for leaving, coming back with the type of news that turns worlds upside down...it doesn’t seem fair to him. It hasn’t been fair to her either, but that’s out of her hands.

She had knocked on Mulder’s door before the sun was even up. She hadn’t expected him to be awake, and so was particularly surprised when he came to the door with a towel around his waist. Evidently, he hadn’t expected her either (though who else is coming to his motel door at 6am?) because the longer she stood there in front of his barely dressed body, the more his color drained away. 

Needing a lie lame enough to be true, Scully told him that Melissa had sprained her ankle and would need some help getting around for a couple days.That she asked Scully to come home rather than go stay with their mother, because who better to be nursed by than a doctor? Mulder had nodded, told Scully to go, assured her he could handle BJ and the case. Scully is sure that Mulder knows what she told him is a lie. But he didn’t object, and that’s the permission she needed to feel settled with him  _ and _ herself. 

She follows everyone off the plane, through the tunnel, and into the terminal. Moments like this remind her of her obsolescence in the universe, and she is somehow comforted by that. She is no chosen one, no messiah nor martyr, no mother of a holy child. She would like to stay that way.

She surveys the crowd waiting to pick up their beloved passengers. All of her fellow fliers, mere faces in her vicinity for an hour or two, are  _ someone _ to somebody else. She is, too. They are all emerging from obscurity into a realm where they are known, for better or for worse. 

At the edge of the crowd, Scully catches her sister’s unmistakable smile and glowing red locks. She saw her sister only two mornings before, but Missy reacts as if they’ve been separated a lifetime. She engulfs Scully in a hug that just about sends the butterflies in her stomach into hibernation. 

“How are you feeling?” Missy asks, pulling away to scan her sister’s face for the honest answer she won’t give. 

Aware of this, Scully turns the corners of her mouth up. “I’m okay, really. My migraine went away at about four in the morning.”

“So you barely slept,” Missy interjects. 

Scully frowns. “Well, I laid in bed from roughly eight to six. There was sleeping involved at some point, I think.”

“How about on the plane? Did you sleep there?”

“No, you know I can never sleep with strangers around.”

“Oh, right. Did they teach you that at the Academy or something?”

“The things I saw at the Academy taught me that.”

“Oh.” Missy regrets bringing it up. As they head toward the luggage area, she holds out her hand, lets her sister place the handle of her carry-on in it. A silent apology, an acknowledged acceptance.

“So what did you end up telling Mulder?”

Scully is endeared that she has successfully chipped away at her sister’s tendency to call him by his first name.

“Oh god, you’re gonna think it’s so stupid.”

Missy laughs. “What did you say?”

Scully’s voice is rife with amusement. “I told him that you sprained your ankle and needed a doctor around to take care of you.”

Melissa bursts into laughter. “Good girl.” Scully would kick a man in the groin if he ever said that to her, but coming from her sister, it’s high praise.

\----------------

They ignore the elephant in the room until they make it to Missy’s car. The plastic of a CVS bag rustles at Scully’s feet as she settles into the passenger seat. 

“Three pregnancy tests,” Melissa explains. “I stopped on the way.”

“You didn’t have to--”

“But I did.” That had been their father’s comeback whenever someone tried to, as he called it, ‘pity the helper.’ They both smile just a bit, their memory of him alive and well. 

“Can I pay you back?”

“No!” Missy insists. “I’m living with you rent free.”

Scully decides this is a good enough reason to let it go. She crosses her legs, watches her sister pull out of the space. She lets a question float around her head until they make it out of the labyrinth of airport side roads.

“Do you think I would be a good mother?”

Missy flicks her gaze toward her sister. Dana is peculiar in her way. Instead of fishing for sympathy like most people when they ask questions of this nature, she expects punishment. She’s practically asking to have a nail hammered into her cross. 

“You’d be a wonderful mother, Dana,” Missy soothes. “You’ve never had a bad intention in your life.”

“Haven’t I?...I killed a snake with Bill and Charlie once.”

“And you cried afterward. I remember seeing the tear stains on your face when you got home. Not to mention that you were what, five or six?”

“Well, what about Daniel? Surely my judgement was wrong there.”

Melissa sighs. “Okay, I’ll rephrase it. Any bad intention you’ve ever had was paid for with regret, and that’s not true about most people.” She frowns. “It’s always the purest souls who are the hardest on themselves.”

Scully stares through the windshield. She will expend no brainpower on her sister’s implication. She doesn’t believe it to be true. 

After a moment--“Do you remember those Raggedy Ann dolls we had, Betsy and Betty?”

Melissa smiles, nods. “Of course. Betsy was yours, and Betty was mine. We had those little wooden bassinets for them.”

“Right.”

Missy lets the memories flow back to her. “We used to sing lullabies and rock them to sleep. Actually, I’d sing, you’d pray with them. Mom and dad thought it was the sweetest thing ever, and I would get so mad at you. I thought you were sucking up to them.”

Scully laughs. This is the first time she’s heard of her sister’s woes. “Missy, I was three. There was no conspiring going on.”

“Say what you will, but your stocking was always  _ a little bit _ fuller than mine.” She smirks at her sister, who blushes and looks at her lap. 

Dana has the unfortunate distinction, at least in Melissa’s mind, of being the favorite  _ daughter. _ Bill Jr. always was and will be the favorite child. He molded to all their parent’s expectations of him, never deviating from the upstanding family man they imagined when holding him for the first time. Dana had done well up until she decided on the Academy. As Missy reminded her countless times, it wasn’t that they hated her going into the FBI. It just wasn’t in their vision for her, that’s all. 

Missy doesn’t fret about her place, even finds it somewhat funny. She isn’t the least favorite child per say (thanks Charlie!) but she  _ is  _ the least favorite child her mother is still in contact with, and that’s a title that takes some maneuvering. 

Scully laces her fingers together, rests them in her lap. “Do you remember telling me that I wasn’t a good mommy one night when we were putting Betsy and Betty to sleep?”

Melissa looks to her sister so quickly she practically forgets she needs to be watching the road. “No, of course not.”

Scully can’t meet her gaze. “Well, I know it’s a silly thing, and we were just children, but it’s stayed stuck in my brain for all these years.”

“Dana, you had probably just finished a ‘now I lay me down to sleep’ prayer, and I felt like I needed to knock you down a notch.” She pats her sister’s shoulder. “There was no truth in it, and I’m sorry it’s bugged you for so long.”

Scully shifts in her seat. The CVS bag crackles as her heels bear down on it. “I’m afraid it’s turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.”

Melissa won’t give weight to her sister’s worries, but won’t discount them either. “The good news about a self-fulfilling prophecy is that you can always change your thinking...You don’t believe in psychics, so don’t try to be one.”

Scully looks at the dashboard, then her sister. “I would hug you right now if we weren’t doing 75,” she coos. 

Something has clicked in her head, some comfort she has long been depriving herself of. Sometimes words fill in the cracks left by those that preceded them. The right words go even further, it turns out. The right words give you permission to heal. 

\-----------------

A dreadful anticipation plagues her as she and Missy walk up to the apartment. She wants to get it over with, even if it goes badly (and she knows it very well might). She craves the relief of surviving such an ordeal. Scully imagines that this is what the French must have felt on their walk to the guillotine. Except instead of the relief of surviving, they got the release of death. Scully is not ready for this yet.

Missy unlocks the door, ushers her sister in. Dana is not used to coming home and finding things in different places than before, Missy can tell from the inquisitive look on her face. She is surveying her territory, updating her memory bank. Looking for the exit signs, maybe.

Melissa closes and locks the door. Letting her sister set the pace, she leaves the CVS bag on the side table. Dana has already taken the carry-on and suitcase to her room.

Her room, Scully finds, is a shrine to sameness, everything looking exactly as she left it two days before. Untouched and completely under her control...these are the reassurances she requires now. She lifts the suitcase onto her bed but leaves it zipped. Its fate is no clearer than hers at the moment. Then she places the carry-on on her dresser, makes a mental note to let Mulder know she made it home safely, and returns to her sister in the living room.

“Have you eaten?’ Missy asks, edging toward the kitchen.

“I won’t be able to until we get this over with,” Scully replies, making her priorities clear.

“Okay.” Missy won’t fight her on this one. She retrieves the bag off the side table, perches at her sister’s side. “Are you ready now?”

Scully screws up her face. “No, but yes. I just need to know at this point.”

Missy takes her sister’s hand with a specific kind of gentleness, like a fairy godmother about to cast a spell upon her princess. Scully is willing to be led. She follows her sister into the bathroom and sits on the closed toilet while Missy pulls the pregnancy tests from the bag. Scully tries not to think about any moment beyond the current one as her sister opens each test, lines them up along the counter. 

“Do you want me in here or outside?” Missy’s tone matches the sympathy that Scully needs.

“Outside, please,” Scully says sheepishly, wishing she could have some guts for once. If no one else witnesses this moment, then maybe it’s not happening. Flawed reasoning that even Mulder wouldn’t agree with, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Okay. I’ll be right on the other side of the door.”

Scully nods her thanks as Missy slips out of the bathroom and shuts the door quietly. Left alone, she feels the crushing gravity that has been trailing her all along. She’s almost certain that her heartbeat would be visible through her skin if she looked. 

She stands, picks up the first test, opens the toilet. Her hands shake so violently that she thinks she might drop the stick in the toilet, which would be a pretty terrible way to return her sister’s kindness. She pulls it away and takes a deep breath to steady herself, holding her arms out in front of her like a sleepwalker. All the things she’s seen, and she’s never been as scared as this moment. Never felt the life she knows and has grown to love so acutely threatened. Never balked at the future in such a fervent way.

It occurs to her that she might seriously need her sister to come in and help her. The thought of that is just pathetic enough to kick her into action. Her hands are barely any more steady than before, but her resolve is ironclad. 

On the other side of the door, Melissa listens as a long period of silence is broken. She’s sitting down, her head resting against the wood, a hand laid against the door like it’s the chest of a lover. 

Silence again, ruptured by Scully’s quiet murmur. “Will you hold on to the test, please? And read the result when it’s ready?” She didn’t know she would need this, but she does. 

“Of course.” 

Scully cracks open the door, passes the stick to her sister. “I wiped it off.” 

Missy suppresses a laugh. “I wouldn’t care if you didn’t, but thank you.”

Scully closes the door quickly, not wanting to hold eye contact with her sister, not wanting to accidentally see the result herself. “Two minutes, right?” Her voice is on the verge of breaking.

“Yes, Dana. Two minutes.”

“Should I wait to do the next one?”

Missy eyes the test, waiting for it to make up its mind. “You can go ahead. It’ll take two minutes too.”

“Okay.” Scully’s voice is barely audible.

“Or you can wait,” Missy offers. “I just suspect that you’d want to check the accuracy as soon as possible.”

“Uh-huh.” She grabs the second test, wearily sits back down. 

Missy’s voice reverberates through the door. “I’ve done this before you know. For myself and for a friend.”

“Really?” Scully’s brain had tricked herself into thinking she was all alone.

“Mm-hm,” Missy confirms. “Mine were never positive, but hers were. I went to Planned Parenthood with her.”

“Oh.” There are things, Scully realizes, that she has neglected to think about. Or maybe she’s putting that off until she knows for sure. It wasn’t a conscious decision, more of an act of self-preservation. Her gut feeling is that she wouldn’t, but she never envisioned herself in a situation like this. If there’s any situation where it’s justified, it’s this, right? Not that she has a problem with it; women should be able to choose for themselves. She just always thought she knew what her choice would be. 

Melissa lifts her eyes from her watch, looks at the door as if she can see her sister through it. “It’s ready.”

“It’s been two minutes?” Scully’s voice rises.

“Uh-huh. Do you want me to come in or…?”

Scully scrambles up, lays the second test on a fresh piece of toilet paper. “I’ll come to you.”

She opens the door, kneels to be eye level with her sister. Prayer position is in close proximity. She bites her lip, her dilated pupils begging her sister to either curse her or free her.

A thin smile appears on Missy’s face as she flips the test so that Scully can read it. “Negative.”

_ One line. _ One very defined red line set against the white space.  _ Has anyone _ , Scully wonders, _ ever gotten a tattoo of that? _

“I--” Tears burst out of her instead of words. She lands in her sister’s arms, utterly unsure of what she’s feeling. Relief, yes. Happiness? Not quite. Sadness? Something like that. 

Missy smooths her sister’s hair down, holds her in the tightest hug she’s probably had in decades. “How do you feel?”

Scully is tempted to ask how her sister does that, always there with the tough questions. Instead, she gulps air until she’s calmed down enough to talk. 

“I don’t know,” she laments, tears streaked down her reddened face. “I thought I would be glad but...I just feel numb. Like I went down the wrong fork in the road and missed something important, but I don’t even know what it is since it didn’t happen.” She sniffles. It sounds like a heart breaking. “I just know it’s supposed to be there.”

“I thought you didn’t want--”

“Not under these circumstances, no. But then...when else is it gonna happen?” Her voice is a sheet of glass. “Because it doesn’t look like any time soon.”

Missy hugs her once again, rocking her back and forth. She overflows with warmth, sympathy, and love. “Honey, you have plenty of time to make your life what you want it to be.”

Scully sobs into her sister’s neck. She feels like an emotional hemophiliac, constantly hemorrhaging pain. Every time she thinks she’s bottomed out, there’s farther to fall. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” she says, wiping her face. “I didn’t know I would be.”

Missy pulls her in a third time. “Don’t ever apologize to me for anything, even the things you’re  _ actually _ wrong about.”

Scully laughs half-heartedly. “Oh!” She realizes then. “We still have two more tests, don’t we?”

Missy nods, smiles empathetically. “The second one should be ready by now.”

Scully is about to get up, but Missy lays a hand on her back, beats her to it. “I’ll grab it.” She strides into the bathroom, picks the stick up off the counter, and takes a look. Again, she flips it so her sister can see. “Negative.”

Scully presses her lips together, a stopgap to any further emotional reaction. “We should do the third one then, just to be sure?”

Missy detects a lift in her sister’s voice, a space she’s made for hope. “Whatever you’d like, Dana.” It seems that her sister will always end up disappointed through no fault of her own, no matter what she wishes for. This chills Missy to the bone.

\---------------

The sisters share dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets for lunch because this is the kind of food Melissa buys when left to her own devices. Missy dunks hers in honey mustard, Scully takes hers plain. Remnants of anxiety hang in the air; Scully’s plight remains unresolved, and they are well aware of that. Whatever path they are walking, this is just the beginning. 

The phone interrupts their silent reverie, and Scully hops up to disguise the fact that its ringing made her jump. “It’s probably Mulder,” she tells her sister. “I meant to call him when we got home.” Missy nods, continues with her nuggets. 

Scully grabs the phone off the wall. “Hello?”

“Hey, is Mel there?” It’s a sweet, flowery voice, very different from the one Scully expected. She furrows her brow.  _ Could Mel refer to her sister? _ She’s never heard anyone call Melissa that. “Who is this?” Missy looks up, watches her sister curiously. It’s not Mulder, evidently. 

The woman on the other line clears her throat. “It’s Trinity. Am I speaking to Dana?”

“Yes, this is Dana,” Scully says slowly, unnerved by the caller knowing her name. “Are you calling for Melissa?” Scully offers, hoping she might get out of this scot-free. 

Hearing this, Missy wipes her hands on a napkin, gets up, and rushes toward Scully, holding her hand out for the phone.

Scully ignores her, keeps the phone to her own ear as the caller speaks to her. “I am, but I was actually wondering about you. Mel told me your worries. How are you doing, Dana?”

Scully is now particularly spooked.  _ Who is this woman, and why does she know all of her business?  _ Missy pokes Scully in the bicep, then gestures for the phone. Scully hasn’t seen her sister this greedily desperate since she snuck out the window when she was seventeen and needed Scully to unlock the front door so she could get back in before their parents woke up.

“Um, Trinity is it, Missy-- _ Mel _ wants to talk to you.”

“Oh, okay! It was nice to finally meet you!” the cheery voice practically sings. Scully just nods and makes her usual ‘Mulder you’re crazy face’ as she hands the phone off to her sister.

“Hi, Trin.” Missy speaks in a rush. “I can’t really talk right now, but Dana is home and all the tests were negative so she’s doing okay. I’ll call you tonight, alright?”

Scully can hear the voice on the other line, but she can’t make it out. Her sister says “I love you, bye” into the phone, then hangs up.

Scully raises an eyebrow, feeling it her duty as the little sister to pry. “Who was that…?” 

Missy puts the phone back on the wall, circles around to her plate, sits down. She answers calmly, casually. “That’s Trinity. She lives in Portland, we used to waitress together.”

Scully slides back into the seat across from her sister. “How come you’ve never mentioned her? She seems to know a lot about me.”

“Well, you’re the reason I moved to DC and all.”

“I didn’t know you were still in contact with anyone from the West Coast.” Scully picks a stray crumb off one of her nuggets, thankful that her sister is in the line of questioning for a change. 

“I bounced around the area for three years, of course I have friends from there.” She grabs her own empty paper plate, points to her sister’s. “Are you done?”

Scully pushes the plate--with two uneaten chicken nuggets--toward Missy. “With the food, yes. Not with the questions.”

Melissa takes both of the plates to the trash, then rinses her hands in the sink. “ _ Yes.  _ Does that answer your question?”

“Depends. What do you think my question is?”

Missy dries her hands on the dish towel, swivels to face her sister. “Is Trinity my girlfriend? Because yes, she is.”

Scully’s mouth drops open the slightest bit. She had known Missy was bi, but she had never met any of her girlfriends, not even in passing. Missy tended to keep them to herself, fearing that the Scully family might encroach on the holy ground she created. “Really?” she asks excitedly. 

“Uh-huh.” Missy sits back down at the table. “For nine months now.”

“Are you serious? That’s incredible, Missy! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Missy just raises her eyebrow. Scully feels like she’s looking in a mirror. “What? You know it doesn’t bother me.”

“Sure, but mom, and Bill…”

“I don’t think that mom would be upset by it,” Scully answers level-headedly. “Surprised maybe, but not mad.”

Missy balls up a napkin, tosses it back and forth between her own hands. “I don’t know that she would be, I just...don’t trust that she wouldn’t. And besides, nothing mom says or does will change how I feel about Trinity. So it’s not really a pressing issue. No need to cause a scene.”

“I can’t believe you moved here without mentioning her. I wouldn’t have let you leave her, you know.”

Missy laughs. “Oh, I do. That’s why I didn’t say a word.” Scully’s laugh is her first genuine one all day.

“She seems very nice,” Scully says, flicking a crumb off the table.

“Oh no, she’s a total bitch,” Missy replies. There’s a moment of silence while Scully figures out that was a joke, then they both laugh.

“ _ Just kidding. _ I love her very much.” Missy’s smile could melt ice. “I’m glad you got to talk to her. Now my two favorite ladies have technically met!”

“I’m afraid to ask whether I’m in first or second place.”

Missy reaches out across the table. “I moved across the country for you, honey.” Then, with a smirk--”But I could move back any day now, so watch out.”

Scully smiles, nods. She can’t imagine what these past few weeks would have been like without her sister near. She hopes Missy never goes away again, as unrealistic a thought as it is. If there are angels on Earth, her sister is one. But Mulder too has emerged as a force in her life; no one destabilized her life quite like him, but he would be her rock if she let him, she knows this. She owes him a call. She knows that too.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy accompanies Scully to a doctor's appointment. Afterward, Missy confronts Scully about her feelings for Mulder, and Scully slips-up on the phone.

She digs through her suitcase, searching for the business card she tucked in the pocket with her underwear. A sharp edge penetrates her skin, stings immediately. Her fingers close around the paper card and pull it out. A thin red cut traces the length of her middle finger, blood begging to seep out. She ignores it and grabs the phone off her nightstand, plugging in the number for the Aubrey Motel. 

As she’s dialing, she realizes that it’s already past lunchtime in DC, and even though Missouri is an hour behind, there’s no way Mulder is in his room. She lets it ring anyway, then asks the man who answers for room 12. He patches her through, and sure enough, the line rings until it gives up. 

Impressed by her own newfound patience, Scully hangs up and dials Mulder’s cell instead. She’s not exactly sure why she didn’t just do this in the first place; maybe she likes the idea of Mulder being stationary without her, stuck in his room like a lost little boy with no one to guide him. Her heart sinks when she thinks about Mulder gallivanting around Aubrey, solving the case like there’s nothing to it, like he could have been doing it by himself all this time.  _ She wants him to need her. _ Naturally, she is ashamed of this desire.

She hits the call button and waits while an invisible force shoots across states and connects her to her partner. She does not have to wait long; he answers after the first ring.

“Hello?” He sounds the same as always. Simultaneously there  _ and _ drifting, one body split between two minds. 

“Mulder, it’s me.” 

“Hey Scully.” There is a lightness in his voice now, like a balloon cut free of its tether.  _ He is smiling, _ she thinks...She hopes.

“I just wanted to let you know I made it home safely…” She trails off, not wanting to stop talking to him, but finding herself with nothing else to say. 

“I’m glad, Scully.” He always addresses her by name more when they are apart. This is a comfort to both of them. “How’s Melissa?”

Scully looks through the doorway, confirming that her sister is nowhere near to cause any antics. “She’s alright.” She deals in half-truths. “We’re going to the doctor later to get an x-ray, but I think it’s just a sprain.” 

“Well, keep me updated. I found a lead on the case--Harry Cokely, the suspect of one of the 1945 murders. I’m on my way to see him. He’s been out of jail since ‘93.”

Scully gulps. “Are you alone?”

“Uh-huh.” He senses her tension through the line. “But I’ll be fine, Scully, he’s an old geezer now. What kind of agent am I if I can’t defend myself against an eighty year old?”

“You could have taken BJ with you.”

“And put a pregnant woman in the line of fire? I’ll be fine, Scully. They wouldn’t have let him out if he were still a danger.”

“Okay, Mulder.” This is not what she means, but it has already been a long day, and there is too much left of it to get into an argument with him. 

“I might be able to come back tomorrow,” she blurts out, as if saying it will make it more true. “...I’d  _ like _ to come back tomorrow.”

“Take all the time you need, Scully. I’ve got this.”

She knows he is trying to be accommodating-- though he so rarely is--but his casual manner confirms her worst fears about her own superfluity. “I want to work, Mulder, you know that.”

“I’m not gonna stop you.” Then, his voice uneven, suspecting but not willing to confront--”Just take care of Melissa--and yourself--okay?”

She nods into the phone. “I will.” She is staring at the barrel of Mulder’s metaphorical gun, knowing he won’t shoot, almost wishing he would. Bleeding out feels like the simple solution. “Bye, Mulder.”

She is leaving so soon, he thinks, grateful to have had her voice accompanying him on the trip. “Bye, Scully. Call the motel tonight, will you?”

“Alright.” She kills the line, each extra second another thorn in her side, a lie allowed to linger. Sin multiplying.

She stands there, clasping the phone in her hand and feeling like a stranger to herself. Her sister thought she should tell him before she flew a thousand miles and let an hour fall between them, and she disobeyed. What Melissa didn’t understand was that vulnerability is not a word in her and Mulder’s shared language. There’s no way to spell out the situation, even if she had wanted to. And she didn’t want to at the time. Or rather, she had wanted to so badly that it was dangerous, that she knew she risked more pain by telling than by withholding. She would have had to invent new words in their language, expand its bounds, and who knows what would come next. Give someone the language to express their feelings, and they will say them.  _ And what then? _

She is scared of her own feelings--and his too--because she knows that admitting means losing, somewhere down the road, and she doesn’t ever want to be without him. If she had never met him, she would never have to live without him. This is the gun that is always pressed to her head. She and Mulder are both holding the trigger.

She doesn’t know if he has such a gun against his temple, thinks that maybe he doesn’t, hopes so at least. There have been others for him, she knows this. Phoebe and...well, Phoebe’s the only one she’s met, and she wasn’t that impressive. But he’s a good-looking guy, and a  _ good _ guy at that, and the whispers of a dark-haired woman who broke his heart float up and down the hallways of the Hoover building. He doesn’t tell, and Scully won’t ask because she worries that the mystery woman is the gun he holds against his own head.

She sets the phone back in its receiver, tired of thinking about guns and triggers and brains blown out. For now, she is in one piece--she’s pretty sure--and she would like to stay that way for as long as her soul will let her.

Her sister calls from down the hallway. “Dana, are you ready?”

Scully managed to book a last-minute appointment with her OB-GYN, thanks to Missy’s insistence that it was an emergency. Personally, she wouldn’t use such a strong word--I mean, it’s not like she’s hemorrhaging or anything. It’s the absence of blood that’s the problem. But there are tests, scans, and probing of the like that can be done, and once Scully admitted this her sister would not drop the issue.  _ Off to every woman’s favorite place they go.  _

\--------

The waiting room is a stepping stone, a purgatory, a beginning and an ending rolled into one. She has been here before, many times. In the past, it felt like an inconvenience, not a threat.

She makes an appointment every year, does everything exactly as she is supposed to do in between, and still she is here and scared. She is careful as careful comes, as prepared as one petite woman alone in the world can be. She can dislocate a jaw, strike a man’s legs out from under him, break a nose. And yet, and yet, and yet...Who first uttered “fairness,” thought it existed on this Earth?

Even so, the consolation of knowing lingers in the distance. Like the minutes between calling 911 and the ambulance arriving.  _ Help is on the way. The nightmare will end, or it will settle in. Lucky or unlucky. Win or lose. _

Scully is not sure what she wants to hear. Three tests is quite definitive; pregnancy is unlikely. And what else is there? That her cycle has been thrown off by stress, that it’ll come back on its own time, don’t worry about it? That’s no comfort. She doesn’t want something to be  _ wrong _ with her, but she knows something’s not right, and what’s worse than knowing that you don’t know? She and Mulder have lived in that hell for years. She can handle mysteries of the outside world, but what a cruel trick for her own body to blockade her. 

Missy nudges her from the adjacent vinyl seat, elbow meeting bicep. “What are you thinking about?”

“How my mind doesn’t know what’s going on with my own body,” Scully replies dryly. “I mean, I know I have a tendency to close myself off, but I’ve cloistered myself so much I no longer know what I am.”

Melissa frowns. “Don’t you mean  who? _ Who you are? _ ”

“No.” Scully shakes her head, looks at her lap. In her darkest thoughts and most blistering nightmares, she is not human anymore. They desecrate her, ravage her body, and leave a memento in her skin, a touch of them. It’s so vivid it might be a memory. Mulder wants an alien; he may have one. That would be ironic, huh? 

_ Can you learn to believe in yourself when you become something you never thought existed? _

_ Can you still believe in God? _

Every job she has dreamed of doing involves solving. Knowing enough to know what you don’t know, then figuring that out. Taking the pencil lines, shading them in. Seeking and finding and never wondering why. She cannot keep this up. There has got to be a meaning.

It is not enough, anymore, to simply wonder for the sake of wondering. To cast light over the darkness because you are tired of the darkness.  _ Why?  _ Is she doing it for Mulder, for the traumatized twelve-year boy locked inside him? Is she doing it for herself, fending off the fallibility, reconciling her belief with proof so that she can get off her own back? Or is she doing it because she was told to, because she is still the daddy’s girl who wants to please? 

Twenty-nine years, and she is still coming to terms with herself. We are all our own x-file. We are all taking ourselves apart and piecing ourselves back together and looking for meaning and losing our minds. 

Missy reaches over the wooden arm of the seat and pats Scully’s hand. Scully is reminded that she hasn’t yet ruled out the possibility that her sister is a mind-reader.

“Dana?” a nurse calls. Her first name feels so secondary that Scully feels certain they’re calling someone else.

“Right here!” Missy responds, getting up and pulling her sister along with her. Scully tugs her sister’s sleeve like a child might, wonders if Missy has ever considered motherhood. 

Once in the corridor, they separate. The nurse takes Scully to get her vitals checked, while Melissa seeks out waiting room D, where the nurse’s flat voice--already tired from hours on the job--told her to wait.

It is not long before her sister joins her there.

“How was it?” Missy asks before Dana even manages to sit down.

Scully shrugs. She turns her left hand to show the pink bandaid on her index finger. “My iron levels are above average.”

“That’s not serious, right?”

“No, it’s usually a good thing.”

They sit quietly, listening to the staticky alt rock song coming through the speakers. They are alone in this particular area, but nurses and doctors bustle just around the corner from them.

Scully regards her sister with a latent curiosity. “Have you ever thought about having children?”

Missy turns to her, laughs. “What?”

Scully is somewhat perturbed by her sister’s nonchalant reaction. “Do you want to be a mother?” she reiterates. “It’s not something we’ve talked about since we were kids, so I was wondering.”

“If my life unfolds that way, then surely I think I’d enjoy it. But I’m not prioritizing it.”

“Ahh.” Her sister has always had a particular reverence for destiny. 

“And besides,” Missy continues, “it could be hard, you know, with Trinity and all.”

It takes Scully a moment to realize what she means. “Oh.” That’s something she’s never had to worry about herself. She runs her finger along the grooves of her bandaid, feels her heart clench up for her sister. “There’s always adoption.”

“Yeah, I guess so. It’s a long, drawn-out process from what I’ve heard.”

“Mmm.” Scully nods, wondering how two women could have two such conflicting problems. 

Before she can voice the irony of this, another nurse pops out from around the corner, peers at a clipboard. “Dana Scully?” Her voice is bright and chipper.

“That’s me,” Scully says, raising a hand to show the bandaid, her battle scar.

“I’ll show you to your room.”

Missy pats Dana’s shoulder as she stands up. “I’ll stay here. Come get me if you need me.”

“Okay,” Scully breathes, grateful to be given her space yet to know support is right around the corner.

\----------------

For someone that went to medical school--and enjoyed it, for that matter--Scully always feels much too out of place in a gynecology office. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before. In textbook diagrams, in wall art, in her own flesh. Yet the 3D model of the reproductive system, the color-coded illustration of the uterus, and the various pamphlets on everything from STDs to birth control to what to expect postnatal smother her, serving as a fresh reminder that Catholicism’s tendency to repress haunts her still. She’s more bothered by her involuntary discomfort than what she sees. 

Dr. Zapolsky enters, easing some of Scully’s nerves immediately. Tall and dark-skinned, she has been practicing medicine for 20 years, and Scully has been seeing her since she moved to Washington. She can be intimidating if you don’t know her, but she’s honest and extremely competent, two things Scully requires of her doctors. And herself.

“Hello, Dana.” Scully sits up straighter as the woman’s voice hits her eardrums. She’s admired Dr. Zapolsky for years, seeing her as an exemplary figure, someone that might have been a mentor to her had she put her medical degree to work. “What can I do for you today?”

There are few things Scully hates as much as being the patient. If she’s the patient, that means she has failed at being her own doctor. That means she didn’t know--and worse--didn’t think she could figure it out on her own.

She wrings her hands. “My cycle is over a week late, which is very concerning considering that it’s always been timely. I’ve been having migraines and nausea and  _ nightmares _ , and I just know something is wrong.”

Dr. Zapolsky drops Scully’s file on the counter. “Well, the pregnancy portion of your urine test came back negative.”

“I took three drugstore pregnancy tests too, and they were all negative. That’s why I’m here.”

“Have you had any notable lifestyle changes over the past few months?” Dr. Zapolsky asks. “Anything out of the ordinary? Stress is a major contributor to fluctuations in the menstrual cycle, as I’m sure you know.”

Scully nods, gathers herself. Dr. Zapolsky is oblivious to the rabbithole she has just fallen into. “I was, um, abducted, about eight weeks ago, and I have no memory of it.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Dana.” Dr. Zapolsky wheels her stool beside the medical chair. “We have a bit of catching up to do.”

“Yes,” Scully looks at her feet. They dangle a few inches above the tile like a child’s. Nothing new. She glances back at her doctor. “There isn’t much to say. I don’t know anything about what happened.”

“Well, tell me what you do know.” Then, seeing the apprehension on Scully’s face--”I’m not trying to play therapist, I just want to understand.”

Scully blinks slowly to keep from crying. It goes like this, it always does: she can manage the trauma until she has to say it out loud. This is a story no one wants to be in, but everyone wants to hear.

“I was taken by a man involved in a case that I worked on. Well, that my partner worked on, actually. I got involved--and long and complicated story short--the man broke into my apartment, bound my wrists and ankles, and stuffed me in his trunk. That’s the part I do remember. After the trunk, it’s all a blur really.”

The doctor furrows her brow. “How were you found?”

“I wasn’t found, I was returned. To the hospital. None of the staff had any idea how I got there, and I was bathed and cleaned by my abductors so no trace evidence was collected.”

“So no rape kit was done, then?”

Scully shakes her head.

The doctor uncrosses her legs, recrosses them with the opposite leg on top. “How long were you missing?”

“About a month...My mother bought me a gravestone, she didn’t think I would be found.” This is a detail she has never spoken out loud. Saying it feels like letting air out of an over-inflated balloon. 

“I’m so sorry, Dana.” Dr. Zapolsky lifts a hand, then puts it back in her lap. “May I hug you?” Scully nods and lets herself be embraced, though she does not feel it necessary. “That sounds like a horrific ordeal.”

Scully shrugs as best she can with Dr. Zapolsky’s arms wrapped around her. “It comes with the job.” Always modest about her suffering, she is. 

Dr. Zapolsky speaks into Scully’s ear. “No, I don’t think it does.” 

The doctor lets go. Scully doesn’t say anything. She curls the fingers of her left hand around her right wrist and squeezes hard enough to be certain that it’ll leave a mark.

Dr. Zapolsky slides her stool back over to the counter, flips through Scully’s file.

“I’d say the best course of action is to start with a blood test. I’ll check a few hormone levels---follicle-stimulating, anti-mullerian, luteinizing. That’ll give some insight into your pituitary gland function and your egg reserve.”

Scully nods along. Those hormones are complicated names she barely remembers, but she trusts it’s the right course of action.

“With that, we can determine whether this is a symptom of a larger problem, or if it’s simply a result of the stress you’ve been under. It should only take a couple days to get the results back.”

Scully nods, bites her lip.  _ More waiting. _

“Have you been seeing a therapist by any chance?” Dr. Zapolsky asks.

Scully shakes her head. Dr. Zapolsky should know her better than that. 

“Well, I highly recommend it even to those who have not gone through any trauma. And for a survivor, it can truly be life-changing.”

A  _ survivor. _ What is she, a war hero? That word is fitting for her father, who lived on the sea and sought eternal rest there. Not her.

“Thank you, but I’m okay.” Scully cannot meet her doctor’s glance.

“If you need any referrals, I can give you some names.” Dr. Zapolsky is just trying to help, Scully knows this, but this is not the help she came here for. 

“The FBI has an on-site psychologist,” she says to close the subject.

“Oh, what a wonderful resource.”

“Most definitely.” Scully smiles weakly and ducks her head, ready to get out of here.

\-------

There are many things she is afraid of, but physical pain is not one of them. The unknown, slow but certain death--these are the things that spook Dana Scully. When you’ve spent years being told that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, you are prepared to suffer for honor. 

This is simply the prick of a needle, a relinquishing. Doctors used to prescribe it as the cure for any ailment, believing it to vanquish toxins from the body. Med school would have been a lot simpler if that were true.

She watches the blood flow out of her veins and into the vial. Some people can’t look; she can’t look away. Missy is seated in the chair next to her, chin resting in her palm after her offer to hold Scully’s hand was rejected. She traces the path of her sister’s blue eyes as they slide from her arm to the vial in the nurse’s hand. Dana has never been afraid to look--that’s the problem.

In an instant, it is done. The nurse smooths a bandage over Scully’s skin, tells her they will call with the results in a few days. And then it is two sisters, going, going,  _ gone. _

\----------

They have a pleasant ride home, a soft and sisterly evening in. The prospect of Dana going back to Aubrey in the morning never even comes up, much to Melissa’s relief. Perhaps the illusion of normalcy her sister pedals in her head has finally given way to their unreal reality. They don’t waste a moment on the uncertainty circling them, instead curling up on the couch with popcorn and gummy bears for another Golden Girls marathon.

“Which one do you think Mulder is?” Missy asks during a slow moment in the episode.

“Huh?” Scully laughs. “Which Golden Girl, you mean?”

“Uh-huh.” Missy pops a red gummy in her mouth. “Or is he too interesting to be pinned down?” she teases, mimicking the swoony non-answer he gave about Scully some weeks ago.

“I don’t know honestly,” she says, pushing a blanket out of her lap. “I’m not sure that I know him well enough to decide.”

“You’re kidding.” Missy glares at her. Clearly her sister has not dropped the illusion after all.

“No, I’m not,” Scully intones, getting up to refill the gummy bear bowl. “And that reminds me, he wanted me to call.” She glances at the clock. It’s half past 8 there, so surely Mulder is back in his motel room. 

Missy isn’t letting her off the hook that easily. She follows her sister into the kitchen. “Dana, I guarantee that you know him better than anyone else in the world. If they conducted a test on every single living human being’s knowledge of Fox Mulder, you would get the highest score.”

“Knowledge isn’t the same as understanding,” Scully murmurs, dumping the remaining gummy bears into the bowl. 

“I’ll give you that, but you know what? You  _ do  _ understand him, you’re just too afraid to confront it.”

Scully wants to recoil, but freezes in place instead. It’s just as dramatic but gives less away. After a breath, she crumples the plastic bag into a ball and dunks it swiftly into the wastebasket.

She speaks rigidly, each word cutting through the air. “If I understood him, there would be no fear.” 

Missy feels this in her chest--the aching, the  _ truth _ in her sister’s voice. Dana is as close to crying as she ever gets. Missy strides over, clasps her sister’s hands in hers. “You don’t have to be scared.” She pulls her little sister in, squeezes her heart to Dana’s own. “He loves you. And I’m not talking about in a romantic way--I don’t know, maybe--but just in general. He loves you, and he would never hurt you.”

Scully’s eyes are glassy with tears now, but Melissa cannot see this in the midst of their hug. “Haven’t you ever been hurt by someone who loves you?” She says into Missy’s ear. “We never mean it, but it happens. It happens all the time.”

“And then you apologize, and you go on. Being hurt once doesn’t mean being hurt forever.”

“It can.” Scully pulls away, wipes her cheeks before her sister can overanalyze. 

“It won’t, not with Mulder. I know enough about him to know that.” She brushes her sister’s hair out of her face. “If anyone was going to cut off the relationship, it would be you.”

“Wha--” Scully gives up the protest. She is partial to burning bridges that are prone to collapse, a last-ditch attempt at dignity. Yet Mulder doesn’t strike her as a bridge that would burn even if she set it aflame. Maybe that’s worse though, it prolongs the struggle.

“Hurting him would be worse than getting hurt,” Scully mutters. 

“Loving him would be better than not loving him,” Melissa responds.

“The correct phrasing of that argument is ‘loving him would be better than being loved,’ if you wanted to copy my logic.” Scully gets curt and analytical when she’s annoyed. 

“Hmm, well, consider that too.”

Their eyes meet and Scully can tell that neither one of them is going to win. “I’ve got to call him before it gets too late.” They both know who  _ he  _ is. She turns on her heels and heads for her room. 

\--------

He didn’t pick up the first time she called, which scared her more than she’s willing to admit. She sat cross-legged on her bed until the phone rang again about twenty minutes later, until she heard his voice on the other line.

“Hey Scully, sorry, I was out wrapping up the case.”

“Wrapping up?” She doesn’t even bother to say hello. “It’s  _ over _ ?”

“Open and shut...or, err, something like that.”

“What happened?” Her voice strains for no reason. She clears her throat.

“I’ll catch you up some other time,” he says breezily. “How’s Melissa doing?”

For a moment, Scully forgets her lie and tries to figure out why he’s asking about her  _ sister _ and not her. Then--”Oh! She’s okay, yeah, it was a sprain like we suspected. Nothing broken on the x-ray. She can just about walk normally now, I think she’ll be off crutches by tomorrow.”  _ Embellish, embellish, embellish.  _ Missy had taught her to lie in the 6th grade, and she finally had some use for that knowledge.

“That’s great! I’m flying back tomorrow morning, I can be at the office by 10 if you wanna meet me there.” 

“Will you tell me about the case? And BJ? How is she?”

“I’ll...I’ll tell you that tomorrow, Scully.” There’s a bit of gravel in his voice, which Scully has noticed comes out when he’s tired or holding back. 

“Fine. Should I assume that by 10, you mean 10:30?”

“Well, you know how the line at the Dulles Chick-fil-A gets,” he wisecracks.

Something goes wrong between her brain and her tongue as she goes to wrap up the conversation.  “Alright, 10:30. Love you, bye.”

Mulder makes a noise like a stifled laugh or a cough that couldn’t be held in. “What was that, Scully?”

Her face is flushed, and she’s thankful he can’t see it. “Sorry, I’ve been talking to Missy on the phone a lot lately. Habit.” The voice flowing out of her sounds calm and collected, like that was just an honest mistake. In a way it was...a much too honest one that has made her anything but calm.

“Oh, is  _ that  _ who you say that to?” he teases. 

She laughs. Surely he couldn’t think there’s anyone else, could he? 

“Just Missy, and maybe my mom.” She says it like a promise. He hears it like a prayer. Unusual, for both of them.

“Bye, Mulder,” she says, ushering any sentimentality away. 

“Bye, Scully.  _ Hate you. _ Oh, sorry--that’s what I say to my dad on the phone.”

Scully giggles into the phone. She’s still giggling as she sets the phone back on the hook.

Even after the call flat-lines, Mulder holds the phone against his ear like it’s a seashell echoing Scully’s giggle back to him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotions run high as Mulder and Scully are reunited after Aubrey and an accidental 'I love you.' Then, Scully gets her blood test results back.

Tapping her foot out of sheer impatience, Scully waits in front of the elevator in the Hoover building’s lobby. She glances at her watch; it’s 9:26am--earlier than she agreed to meet Mulder--and yet she couldn’t keep herself away any longer. She’s among a crowd of other agents, either bored with their jobs or killing themselves for it, and she’d bet her life savings that she’s the only one going down. 

The elevator dings, the up arrow illuminating to indicate its direction. Scully steps backward to let the other loiters slip in. She is left alone. As expected, the basement is not in high demand. Every day she starts off by waiting for the elevator, hoping that maybe it will be her lucky day and that down arrow will light up right away. And every day, she finds herself headed for the stairs like a dejected puppy. 

The heavy door of the stairwell clicks shut behind her as she descends into the building’s darkened depths. She traverses the stairs like she is back at the Academy running drills, trying to prove herself. It’s only one story, nothing much, and she takes it in eight seconds--she counted in her head. 

Her heart rate just a bit elevated and her hair just a bit displaced, she pushes out into the ever-familiar basement hallway. Halfway open, the door collides with something solid and whiplashes her backward.

“Shit!” The exclamation comes from the other side of the door. Scully flicks a stand of hair out of her face and tries again, this time with caution. She peeks around the door, and there he is. She’d believe he was a figment of her imagination if the door hadn’t just proved otherwise. She slips into the hallway, lets the door shut behind her. 

“Mulder,” she practically laughs, “are you okay?”

He kneads his right shoulder. “They’ve got to put a speed limit in there,” he groans. 

“May I suggest not standing right in front of the door?” she muses. 

“Well, considering we’re the only two who ever come down here, I figured I’d take my chances.” He bends to scoop up his key, his injury evidently not so serious after all. He jams it into the lock while Scully interrogates him. 

“How did you get down here?”

“Teleported.” He twists the key, and the lock surrenders.

“I was waiting for the elevator not sixty seconds ago. I didn’t see you head to the stairwell.”

They jaunt into the office, or as they have taken to calling it, their dominion. 

“I didn’t take the stairs,” Mulder tells her. “I took the elevator.”

Scully turns and looks through the doorway as if some fairy godmother will appear to explain it all. “What do you mean?  _ I _ was waiting for the elevator. It went up. You didn’t get on it.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Scully. I walked up, hit the down arrow, and the doors opened within five seconds.”

“But I-I took the stairs in eight seconds,” her voice high with frustration. “It’s impossible for the elevator to have beat me.”

“You have other redeeming qualities, I assure you.”

“Oh, really?” Scully coos. “Like what?” The more time apart, the more willing they are to walk the line when they see each other. Especially in the wake of accidental I love you’s. 

Mulder props himself against the desk. “We’d be here all day if I dove into it. Rest assured that a conveyor belt built in the 60s has nothing on you.”

A feeling Scully can’t quite identify bubbles in her chest. She smiles, looks away. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she teases.

“Yup.” He tosses his keys in the air and catches them as they fall back to earth. “I don’t have much success with it...what am I doing wrong?”

Laughter flutters out of Scully, the butterflies in her stomach taking flight. It is a wonderful sound, a more certain version of the girlish giggles Mulder heard through the phone--the ones that followed him into his dreams. His eyes meet hers. They are the color of caramel this morning, she notices,  _ sweet, sweet caramel.  _

“You know it’s an hour earlier than we agreed to meet, right?” She raises an eyebrow in his direction. Mulder being willingly early is about as unlikely as catching Bigfoot. 

“I caught an earlier flight. I was going to surprise you, but you see how that worked out.”

“I don’t take kindly to surprises, Mulder,” she drawls, her pupils dilating as she looks up at him. 

“Yeah well, neither does my shoulder.” He rubs it dramatically, then squares himself up in front of her, hands on his hips. Her eyes are level with his lips. The image of her tongue gliding over his mole flashes in her head. It would feel--no, she can’t think about that. Thinking about feeling tends to lead her to some dangerous places. Namely,  _ more  _ feeling. 

The jig up, they snap back into themselves. “So, the case.” Scully plants herself in the chair in front of the desk. “What happened? And how’s BJ? Are she and Tillman going to raise the baby?”

Mulder sighs, swipes his fingers through his hair. “So Melissa is better, I take it?”

“ _ Mulder… _ ” Scully shoots daggers at him with her eyes. “Missy is fine. What happened in Aubrey?”

He sets his elbows on the table and rests his chin atop his hands. “I told you about Cokely, right? The suspect from the 1945 murders?”

Scully nods.

“Turns out, BJ is his granddaughter. Her father was adopted, so she didn’t know. Essentially…” he hesitates, hoping to slip his supernatural explanation into the field report without Scully’s interference. “BJ...she went crazy.” Scully’s jaw locks as she listens. “Genetic memory tends to skip a generation. I think the psychosis of her grandfather surfaced in her.”

Scully stares at the desk, at his hands against the desk, at his rolled-up shirt sleeves. She wants him to be kidding; she knows he’s not. 

“Is she…?” Her eyes plead for the answer she wants to hear. 

Mulder thanks her god that he’s able to assuage her fears, at least partially. “No,” he shakes his head. “But she’s being committed to a psych ward.”

“But she’s pregnant!” The desperation in her voice is about as cutting as Mulder has ever known. 

He softens his voice. “It’s an all-female ward. They’ll take care of her.”

“She’s just a woman, a normal woman…”

Of all the parts of the story he expected Scully to object to, this was not one. “She killed Cokely, and she tried to kill two other people, Scully. Me included.”

“She tried to kill  _ you _ ?!”

He nods, his face a solemn slate. “Tillman saved me. I’m fine.”

“You can’t go alone anymore, Mulder.” She chokes back tears. Mulder leaves his chair and kneels before her, shocked by how quickly emotion has sprung to the surface. “ _ You can’t _ .”

He frames her shoulders with his hands, breathes words of comfort into her ear--”It’s okay, Scully. I’m okay.”

Her body trembles against him. “Mulder, if you died right now, I’d stop breathing. By my own hand or God’s.”

Mulder is seized with such sudden fear--such distilled awareness of his own mortality--that he wants to lash out, to tell her to never ever say that again or he would go far away and change his name and abandon this life just so that she would never have to hear of his death. Instead, he collects himself.

“I’ve always thought the moments you think you’re dying are the ones where you’re living the most.”

She hides her face in the crook of his neck. It is such a dignified thing to say, so completely Mulder. It tears her heart clean in half. 

“I’m screwed if that’s true,” she blubbers into his shirt. It smells like airport and aftershave. His hands meet her shoulder blades like he’s looking for angel’s wings. She imagines he must be disappointed.  _ He’s not. _ He walks his fingers up and down her bra straps like a mother might rock her baby. He doesn’t mean it in a sexual way, but as an acknowledgement of what she is--not just a coworker, or his friend, or any ordinary human being, but someone-- _ the only one _ \--who makes him believe in holiness, the single thing he has never pinned his hopes on. 

He presses his lips to her cheek, catches her salty tears on his tongue. Speaking to her skin, he whispers, ”What’s wrong? Why did you leave Aubrey?”

_ He knows. _ Of course he knows, she’s known that he knows, but it still startles her to be caught in a lie. She turns her head so that he’s forced to take his lips from her skin. He cradles the back of her head instead, her hair getting caught between his fingers.

She’s told too much of the truth to lie anymore. “Something happened to me during my abduction. They did something to me, but I don’t know what. I’m trying to figure it out.”

She speaks plainly, raw as skin-to-skin contact. Mulder feels as if her sorrows have migrated to his body, burrowed into him, and sworn to stay.

“I haven’t had my…” she sniffles, the fear coming back to her again. “I haven’t had my period since I was returned. That’s abnormal for me.”

He pulls her in closer, like they could become one if he tried hard enough. He doesn’t want to say it, but he knows he has to. 

”Are you pregnant?”

He feels her eyelashes flutter closed against his shoulder. “No, I even got a professional test done. That’s the worst part, something being wrong and having no explanation.”

“I know how you feel.”

She exhales. Her stomach fills then flattens against him. 

“Is there anything I can do?” he asks, knowing that nothing would ever be enough. 

“I think that maybe…” her voice falls quieter. “I think that I should take a leave of absence. While I get this all figured out.”

“Mmm-hmm.” The vibration of his voice box resonates within them both. “That sounds like a good idea.” He is as gentle as if he were speaking to a newborn baby. 

“I am really, really sorry,” she stammers, mouth against his ear.

“For what?” His breath tickles her earlobe. 

“For making you do it alone.” If she weren’t pressed to his ear, he wouldn’t be able to hear her.

“I’m not alone, Scully. You’re a part of me now. I’m carrying a miniature version of you in my head wherever I go.”

She’s crying again, a reflex tapped. 

He continues whispering into her ear. “She’s telling me that there’s a scientific explanation, that there’s no such thing as extraterrestrials, that I’m batshit crazy--” Scully laughs, Mulder smiles. “--and I have to say, she makes a very convincing argument. I’m even starting to believe her, you know, just a little bit.”

He pulls back so that he can see her face. Her brokenness glimmers off of her like a shattered mirror. He wipes her tears away with his thumbs, then looks straight into the reflecting pond of her eyes.

“You are more important to me than any dumb X-file. Even Samantha hurts less because of you.” He was hollow, and she is filling him in. He hadn’t realized that he was draining her in the process. “I want you to be happy, and I want you to be whole,” he affirms. “Whatever you need to do, I’ll support you.”

She wraps her arms around him and nods in gratitude, her nose bouncing off his cheek. She will learn to live in her body again. She will learn to live. She will learn.  _ She will.  _

\--------------

Scully made the appropriate arrangements with Skinner and walked out of that basement office indefinitely that night. She had spent so much time pretending she was fine to save face, thinking it was the noble thing to do. That was what she was taught, how could she know any different?

She never anticipated the inner strength that comes from vouching for yourself. From deciding that you are worthy just because you are alive. From owing nothing to no one, unapologetically. She suddenly understood why her sister had always seemed brave to her, so completely okay with disregarding expectations and breaking rules.  _ Courage breeds confidence,  _ Missy remarked when Scully brought this up to her _. All you have to do is take that initial leap of faith.  _

But it would be a mistake to assume that Scully is truly free now. A person who is in total control of their life does not choose to leave a job they love, however temporary the absence may be. It’s not like something better has come along, an option that brings with it the bittersweet pang of leaving a beloved place for a new adventure. No, that’s not this--this is sacrifice on all sides. 

Her, backing away from the work that keeps her sane and the experience that has made her insane. Mulder, shouldering the blow of fruitless investigation all by himself. Another loss in his stepping stone graveyard. And what about Missy, who has uprooted her life and left the woman she loves to take care of one she shares blood with? Scully has not properly thanked her for that, she knows this. And now...what comes now?

Scully’s stomach folds in on itself. She has not felt this listless since the weeks between the FBI’s offer to join them and her med school graduation, when her heart knew what it wanted and her brain feared anyone finding out. Working yourself to the bone to get a medical degree and then shoving it aside? Her parents would think something was wrong with her. In fact,  _ she _ thought that something was wrong with her then too. It was Missy who convinced her that changing your mind is the most human trait of all. What is Scully always at odds with if not her own human fallibility? 

These thoughts play through her head from her drive home to Missy’s homemade dinner to the moment she tucks herself into bed. Before her head hits her pillow, she pops open a bottle of melatonin tablets and places one on her tongue. It plunges her into dreamless sleep.

It is a relief, when she wakes up, to realize that she did not dream because this means she did not have nightmares either. Being a captive audience to your own brain gets tiring. Two nights pass this way, their days filled with waiting and research. She cracks the spine of every medical encyclopedia she has looking for clues into her condition.  _ This is the most sensible way to move through life _ , she thinks,  _ preparing for the worst so that reality will be no more heinous than the depths of your imagination.  _

Mulder calls from the office each night before he leaves. She did not ask him to do this, but she is grateful that he does. Their conversations are neither deep nor long-lasting, the perfect salve for Scully’s sudden rush out of their breakneck world into relative normalcy. 

Missy is, unsurprisingly, elated that her sister is prioritizing herself. She even goes for an extra grocery run after work and stocks up on Dana’s guilty pleasures, hoping that the pattern of abstaining may be ending on all fronts. Dark chocolate covered strawberries, Greek yogurt that  _ doesn’t _ say nonfat on the label, Nutter-Butters. These are things Dana loves but denies herself. Missy has never been more proud to see an empty package of Nutter-Butters in the garbage.

That is how the conversation starts. Dana is on the couch, and Missy joins her. 

“You found the Nutter-Butters. I’m glad.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Scully nods, half-paying attention, half-perusing one of her old medical textbooks. 

“I tried to pick stuff I remember us having in the house as kids. I wasn’t sure if you still liked them.”

“Oh, I do, I just usually avoid peanut butter.”

“Why?”

She looks up from the page for a moment, as if the question should answer itself. “Fattening.”

“Yeah, because that’s something _ you  _ should be worried about,” Missy jests. 

“Heart disease is the number one killer of American women, and it is tightly linked to weight and diet,” Scully says matter-of-factly. 

Missy reaches over and lifts the textbook out of her sister’s lap. “That’s enough of that.”

Scully smirks, lets her sister close the book and put it on the table. She pulls her feet onto the couch and sits cross-legged. “My test results came back, by the way.”

“What?” The textbook slams onto the table. 

“Yeah, they called a couple hours ago.” Scully rubs her eyes, sleepy from reading. “I have elevated follicle-stimulating and luteinizing hormone levels, but low levels of anti-mullerian hormone.”

Missy raises her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

“It’s consistent with the results of a menopausal woman.” She says it in her doctor voice, as if she’s speaking of a body she autopsied instead of herself. “I have an ultrasound tomorrow to count my ovarian follicles.” She sighs, her face revealing nothing. “To give an idea of whether I could still be fertile.” 

“My goodness.” Missy touches her sister’s hand. “I think that warrants a hug.”

Scully nods, and her sister pulls her in. Missy’s hugs are like a warm towel after a shower, purifying the cleansed. 

“What time is your appointment?”

“One. But you don’t have to come.”

“I’m coming, no arguments,” she insists. “I have the lunch shift tomorrow, but I can swap for the dinner one instead.”

“Okay.” Scully smiles softly, devoid of any urge to fight. She has surrendered to her fear, and in doing so, has found herself free of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I split what I was planning to put in this chapter in half because it came out to 6k, so chapter 12 will be coming soon!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully gets major insight into what's wrong with her at her follow-up doctor's appointment. Then, Missy takes her to get a tarot card reading.

  
It is not Scully’s ideal Friday afternoon. The paper gown itches, the medical chair makes her feel like she’s on display, and Dr. Zapolsky is not exactly the next person she expected to be inside her. As Dr. Zapolsky’s wand probes around, Scully distracts herself by wondering what Mulder is up to. He submitted the Aubrey case report to Skinner yesterday--he told her over the phone--so that probably means he was assigned a new case today. He’ll be doing background research and formulating his crackpot theory then. It must be much more productive without her fighting him every step of the way.

Dr. Zaplosky finally gets her wand into place and points to the black-and-white image on the monitor. Scully and Missy, who sits off to the side, both watch intently. “So what we’re looking at here is the antral follicle count inside your ovaries,” the doctor explains. “Follicles contain the egg that gets released during ovulation, so essentially the higher the count, the more fertile you are.”

The image on the screen contains grey matter punctuated by a few dark circles. “Are the circles the follicles?” Scully asks, worry growing in her voice.

“Yes, ma’am.” Dr. Zapolsky repositions her wand and pulls the monitor toward her and Scully. “I have to be honest, this is an abnormal count for a thirty year old.” She taps a fingernail against each dark circle on the screen as she totals them up. “Five.” The word hangs in the air.

“That’s too low, isn’t it?” Scully says, posing it as a question though she already knows the answer.

“I’m afraid it is.” Dr. Zapolsky fiddles with the wand. “The average count for a woman in your age range is fifteen.”

While Dr. Zapolsky removes the wand, Missy watches her sister’s face.  _ Blank. _ She bites her lip. Like twin telepathy, the emotion that Dana will refrain from letting out bubbles up inside her. 

Scully takes her feet out of the stirrups, clutches her clothes in her lap. “How could this have happened?”

Dr. Zapolsky washes her hands. “Well, considering that you’ve had no irregularities in the past, it is unlikely that you’ve had a naturally low follicle count since birth. A number like that is very unusual, and the only women I’ve seen it in have had menstrual issues for years.”

“Is it something that could be…tampered with?” Scully swallows the lump in her throat away. The only thing worse than being a victim is the constant reminders of it.

“Again, unusual, but yes. I would suspect that an ova removal was performed.”

“You mean they harvested my eggs?” Scully’s voice has gone up an octave. She flirts with hysteria. 

“Unfortunately so.”

“That’s horrendous,” Missy whispers, unable to stay quiet any longer.

“It seems that enough of the supply was removed to affect your hormone levels and stop ovulation altogether,” Dr. Zapolsky continues.

“So I’m menopausal then?” Scully digs her nails into her clothes. “Or at least premenopausal?”

“It’s still early, and it is possible that hormone replacement therapy could stimulate the follicle growth and perhaps promote fertility.”

“But my menstrual cycle is shut down, is that what you’re saying?” Scully presses. “If I didn’t do anything, I would enter menopause.”

“Most likely, Dana,” Dr. Zapolsky responds solemnly. 

The back of Scully’s throat burns, threatening to unleash tears. “Well, I’d like to exhaust my options. I know early menopause can have detrimental health effects…”

“It can, and the hormone therapy would attempt to combat that.”

“And I would like to have the option of carrying a child, if possible.”

“Of course.”

Scully bites her lip and looks to her sister, whose eyes have filled with tears. She has to look away. Seeing Missy like that only breaks her even more.

“We’ll take care of you, Dana,” Dr. Zapolsky promises. “There are plenty of options, and I’ll provide you with information on them all.”

She musters a smile, nods. “Thank you Dr. Zapolsky.”

She does not feel thankful, not at all.

\----------------

“Nonconsensual ova removal, that’s got to be some kind of crime, doesn’t it?” Missy asks as the elevator deposits them in the hospital parking garage.

“Medical rape, I suppose,” Scully replies, her voice flat and dissociated. “I don’t know if it could be prosecuted.”

“It sure as hell better be prosecuted,” Missy fumes. 

“Well, my case is still open, but it’s not exactly a top priority.”

“Weird, isn’t it?” Missy huffs. “You  _ work _ on the X-files, are the  _ victim _ of an open x-file, and yet it gets pushed aside.”

“It’s not Mulder’s fault,” Scully stammers, the words flying out of her faster than she can process them.

“I never said it was.”

“Skinner and the Bureau can’t afford to keep us on it. Any case that goes longer than six weeks, that’s what happens. Like Mulder’s sister--that case is still open too.”

“That case is twenty years old, Dana. You were abducted two months ago.”

Scully says nothing. Does Missy think that she hasn’t counted the days since her return, eagerly anticipating the moment the number of days she’s been back exceeds the number that she was gone? She hits the unlock button on her key fob, the car’s highlights directing her and Missy toward it in the shadowy parking garage. 

Missy speed-walks to the driver’s side. Scully grimaces.

“It’s my car, Missy. I’m fine, I’ve got it.”

Missy doesn’t move. “I know, but I want to take you somewhere.”

Scully sighs, lets her sister slide into the driver’s seat. “Do I even want to ask?” 

“Well, I would expect you to.”

Scully settles into the passenger’s side as her sister cranks the engine.”What are the chances that I’ve been there before?”

“Are there such things as negative percentages?” Missy quips. 

“Well--”

Missy cuts her off right there. “For these purposes, there’s not.” She glances over her shoulder, backs out of the spot, and guides the car down the maze of parking garage levels. “I’m taking you to a friend of a friend of mine’s. She’s a clairvoyant.”

Scully smirks. “Is that so?”

“She does palmistry and tarot cards readings, plus she can contact spirits,” Missy replies.

“Oh, well now that I know she talks to dead people…”

“C’mon Dana, she could really help you. You don’t go to therapy, so this is the least you could do.”

Scully laughs. “You think a psychic is comparable to therapy?” 

“A good one, yes. I mean, that’s what you need right now, isn’t it? Some clarity about your future?”

Scully rolls her eyes. “I could get as much clarity from a magic 8 ball.”

“Some psychics are scammers, sure, but not Holly. Holly is a trained professional.”

“You can read palms and tarot cards too. Why go to her?”

“Because she doesn’t know you. You wouldn’t believe a word I say, and there’ll be no bias in Holly’s assessment.”

Scully glances over at her sister. Missy takes this to mean that she’s entertaining the idea. “It’s not like you have anywhere else to be,” Missy reminds her.

“You do,” Scully counters.

“At five. We’ve still got three hours before then,  _ darling _ ,” Missy says with a mischievous smile. 

Scully lets herself be swept away. Holding tightly to the reins has done her no good.

\------

A few minutes later, Scully finds herself in a house in the Virginia suburbs that looks permanently decorated for Halloween, on the inside at least. A bell rings as they enter the front door, the only indication that this is a shop formerly zoned in a residential area and not where someone lives. It is the exact cliche Scully would expect from a psychic's place, and it makes her feel no better about Missy’s insistence that the woman is a professional.

A woman with braided hair and long black nails emerges through a beaded curtain.

“Melissa! How nice to see you.” She and Missy trade kisses on the cheek like they’re in Europe. “And who do we have here?” the woman asks, casting a curious eye toward Scully.

“Holly, this is my sister Dana. She’s here for a reading.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” The woman approaches Scully and holds out her hands. Reluctantly, Scully grasps them. “You have a very fraught energy, Dana,” the woman says, the edges of her lips turning down. “I’d be interested in doing a tarot reading with you.”

Still holding the woman’s hands, Scully answers, “You can do what you want, but I can’t say that I’ll believe you.”

The woman lets go of Scully’s hands. “That’s okay. Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Scully throws her sister a sideways glance. Missy smirks. It is rare for her sister to get so effortlessly shut down.

They make their way to a candlelit back room, and Scully is certain she must have walked onto the set of a bad movie. She keeps this thought to herself as Holly seats her at a cloth-covered table. Holly takes her place across from Scully and pulls a deck of cards from a shelf under the table. Missy sits at the table’s edge with a perfect view of both of them.

“I take it this is your first time getting a reading?” Holly asks as she shuffles the cards. Scully is impressed that she can do it with such long fingernails. She nods. 

“Great, I always enjoy newcomers. I would like to do one of the most comprehensive readings with you, Dana. It’s called a Celtic Cross spread. Ten cards. What do you think, Melissa?”

“That’s exactly what I was going to suggest.”

“Perfect. Now normally, Dana, we use a question, chosen by you, to guide the process. However, the Celtic Cross is a spread that encompasses many areas of life, so it doesn’t require one.”

“Alright.” Scully doesn’t care what this woman does as long as Missy pays for it.

“You’ll draw ten cards, then I’ll place them down, flip them, tell you what each position means, and interpret each card. Finally, I’ll interpret the spread altogether.”

“ _ Lovely.” _ She can’t help but throw some sarcastic bite in. This sounds like a rigorous process.

The deck shuffled, Holly fans the cards out and holds the display toward Scully. “Go ahead, pick one at a time and I will lay them out.”

She does as told--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-- until they are laid out in front of her in the shape of a roughly constructed cross. 

“Wonderful.” Holly lays her own palms against the table. “Now, I’ll flip each one and tell you about them. Are you ready?” Holly looks up at Scully with piercing brown eyes. They remind her of Mulder’s when he’s frustrated. 

“Yes ma’am,” she says, feeling suddenly submissive.

“Let’s begin with the present card, which reflects your current situation.” Holly turns the card, revealing a sketch of a burning building. The sudden desire to flee grips Scully, but she stays put. “The tower,” Holly says. “There has been an abrupt change in your life recently, one that you might call a disaster. You are scared, certainly, but you don’t need to be. Change is necessary when the foundation of what you believe has proved faulty. It is a survival mechanism.”

Scully stares at the card. What would she do if she were stuck in a skyscraper on fire?  _ Jump.  _ And panic the whole way down. 

“Next card, please,” she mumbles.

“Alright.” Holly flips the second card, an upside down triangle. Scully hears Missy lick her lips.

“This is the three of pentacles reversed,” Holly explains. “This second spot represents the main challenge you are currently facing. We normally perceive a triangle as well-balanced and in synergy. The upside-down triangle means that you are dealing with a lack of teamwork. A power struggle in the work environment, perhaps? One that is keeping you from becoming your most enlightened self.”

Scully shakes her head. “If anyone’s keeping me from becoming my ‘most enlightened self’”--she puts air-quotes around that phrase--”it’s me.”

Holly continues. “The version of yourself that you feel like you have to be around that person is what’s holding you back. Work on expressing your truest self. If that person cares about you, they will accept it.”

Scully looks toward her sister, who might as well have a bucket of popcorn and some Junior Mints with how much she’s enjoying this. Missy winks, and Scully rolls her eyes and focuses back on Holly. “What’s the next card?” she asks with some apprehension.

“The third card represents the past.” Holly flips it, and Scully finds herself looking at an upside down goblet with a bird on top of it. “The ace of cups,” Holly remarks. “ _ Reversed. _ You are coming out of a period of loss, emptiness, instability. The water was running out of your cup, so to speak. You’ve gotten used to pain and emotional exhaustion, maybe too used to it. Now you must lift yourself out of that dark place and step into the light. Leave the past in the past.”

Scully crosses her arms over her chest. Missy led her right into the belly of the faux motivational beast. This is  _ worse _ than therapy, too belittling and sentimental.

“And the next card?” she asks, impatience building inside her.

“Card four, the future.” A balanced scale adorns the card. “Justice! The truth will come to pass. Whatever has happened, the offender will be held accountable, and the victim will breathe easy again.”

“That’s one of my favorite cards,” Missy pipes up. 

Holly nods. “Who doesn’t love to see justice served?” 

“Mmm,” Scully mumbles, not interested in furthering the conversation. She shifts in her seat. “What’s card five?”

“Card five is the conscious card. It represents the goals and desires that drive you.” She flips the fifth card. A woman with a sword stares back at them. “Queen of swords,” Holly remarks. “She makes principled, logical decisions, never letting herself be guided by her heart. Is it possible that you have embraced this as an ideal, molding yourself to fit this archetype?”

This is a rhetorical question--or at least she hopes it is--because Scully is not planning to answer it. “Insightful,” she snickers. 

“Then we have card six, which represents the unconscious desires that are driving you. These are the values that you might not even understand yet, but which are most fervently directing you toward your goal.”

“Am I allowed to flip it myself?” Scully asks. “Or does that ruin it?”

“You pick them, I flip them,” Holly replies. “It maintains the balance. I appreciate your enthusiasm, though.” 

Scully chuckles. For a psychic, Holly sure is reading her wrong.

Holly reveals the sixth card, ten cups in a circle. “The ten of cups. A beloved card. It indicates true emotional fulfillment. The feeling of having it all; harmony, peace, happiness. This is what you are unconsciously in pursuit of.”

“Isn’t everyone?” Scully interjects.

“Most people  _ think _ they are, but very few actually are.”

Scully decides not to read into this. She’s expecting a full card-by-card breakdown from Melissa later anyway, so it’s best to expend as little brain power on this child’s play as possible.

“Card seven,” Holly continues, “indicates the influence of your perception of yourself on your life and advises how to move forward.”

Scully nods and watches as the woman flips a card with one less cup than before, all upside down. “Oh, the nine of cups reversed! This is often associated with dissatisfaction of some sort. Your life may look perfect, but it is still lacking. You have what you thought you wanted, yet it is not entirely what you want.” Holly locks eyes with Scully, who feels like a hostage at this point. “In times of discontent, it’s best to identify the parts of your life that are failing to fulfill you. Disregard the expectations of others, and listen to what your soul is saying.”

Scully purses her lips. Something inside her stirs, taps on some long-forgotten childhood impulse, makes her want to cry. She will not.  _ She will not. _

“And what’s the next card?” she asks, her voice gravelly. 

“External influences. The energies around you that impact your energy.”

“Huh.” Scully blinks. “I thought this was an internal assessment.”

“It is,” Missy replies before Holly can get to it. “What shapes you more than the people you spend time with?” She sends a smirk her sister’s way. 

“Ah,” Scully replies, directing her attention back toward Holly before Missy can cause any more trouble. 

Holly flips the eighth card, revealing a man holding a staff high in the air. “The king of wands. A motivating energy. Someone who is a bit of a visionary, a natural born leader who follows through and carries out their goals. For someone who is more restrained, the king of wands can really get them out of their comfort zone.”

Scully nods, not able to debate this one. 

Holly takes a breath. “And the ninth card, perhaps the most telling one. It is an analysis of both hopes  _ and _ fears, reflecting how what you most fear may be exactly what you need, or vice versa.” Holly flips the card, and Scully is face to face with a skull and crossbones. She laughs--regrettably--out loud. “Death?”

“Yes, this is the death card,” Holly remarks. “But don’t be scared, it doesn’t mean literal death. It represents rebirth and renewal, actually. A metamorphosis is upon you, and you have the opportunity to change your life for the better.”

“And I fear that?” Always the skeptic, she is. 

“You fear the unknown that comes with change. You mistakenly believe that change only yields bad outcomes, when your life has proven that to be false multiple times.”

Scully bites her lip, annoyed by the audacity of this woman to assume that she ‘knows’ her because of some cards. “And the final card…?”

“Yes. Card number ten is the outcome. A summary of your situation and its likely resolution.” Holly turns the final card, a divinely dressed woman on a throne. “The empress,” she says. “A wonderful card for you.”

Scully furrows her brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the empress is an expression of feminine nature. It’s deeply associated with fertility and nurturing.”

“And what does that have to do with me?” 

“Well, you have a little girl, don’t you?” Holly says confidently, as if she had heard it from Missy.

“No.” Scully shakes her head. “I have no children. I _ can’t _ have children.”

“Oh.” Holly dodges Scully’s glance. “Well, you would make a great mother, Dana.”

“You don’t even know me,” Scully practically growls. “You just know the stupid cards.”

Scully’s chair howls as she pushes away from the table. She disappears through the beaded curtain before Missy has even gotten up. 

“I’m sorry about her, Holly,” Missy murmurs. “She’s going through a very sensitive time. How much do I owe you?”

“Don’t worry about it. Pay it forward, treat your sister to something that will make her feel better.”

“Are you sure? You did a wonderful job, you deserve compensation for your time.”

“Spend it on your sister,” Holly emphasizes. “She needs it more than me.”

Missy pats Holly on the shoulder. “Thank you. I will stop by again soon, I promise.”

Holly smiles, nods. “Goodbye, Melissa. And say thank you to Dana for me.”

The bell pings behind Missy as she exits the shop. Outside, her sister’s in the driver’s seat with the engine already running. Missy slides into the passenger’s seat.

“Quite a performance there,” Missy teases. “You missed your standing ovation.”

Scully grips the steering wheel with perfect 9-and-3 positioning even though they are still in park. “I want to go home, not be lectured by some woman who uses a game to say the same generic crap to everyone.” 

“But it didn’t feel generic, did it?” Missy probes her sister’s face. “You connected with much of what she said.”

“And I’m sure you did too, because it’s just universal truths of humanity served in bite-size portions. Vague enough that you can connect them to your life and feel like some incredible spiritual reading is taking place.”

Missy raises a brow. “Are you this difficult with Mulder?” It comes off harsher than intended. Scully’s gaze drops to her lap, her psyche pierced. 

“I guess you’d have to ask Mulder, wouldn’t you?” she responds coolly, shifting the car into reverse and cutting off any further conversation.

If her sister--the one person she feels most willing to be herself with--thinks she is difficult, then how must everyone else view her? Especially Mulder, who is only trying to grow out of his trauma. He must hate her for making it so hard, and for what? So she can have the satisfaction of being right? Truly, what would she lose if aliens knocked on Mulder’s door this very day?...Her pride? She cannot bear to think about it any longer, how her partner must hate her and yet has been so good to her. How she deserves none of it. 

  



	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Scully copes with her diagnosis, Mulder joins her for the Scully family Christmas dinner. Plus, Melissa's girlfriend meets the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set Christmas Eve of 1994 (season 2)

Self destruction is a natural impulse for Dana Scully, though she’ll try to deny it. Take one unexplained abduction, add a dash of premature menopause, and sift out time spent proving Mulder wrong, and you’ll get a struggling Scully.

She can tell she’s entering a bad mental state when food becomes a suggestion rather than a necessity. Every bite is either earned according to whatever trivial rules she’s set for herself in that particular moment, or is not deserved and therefore not eaten. It’s a game where she’s the coach, player, and referee, yet she still loses every time. Nourishment is both prize and punishment, feeding her hunger but vacating her control.

This habit started when she was a teenager and wracked with feelings her petite frame couldn’t contain. It felt much safer than the route her siblings had taken of sneaking out in the middle of the night or using fake IDs to buy alcohol or skipping church on the regular. As far as fifteen-year-old her was concerned, she wasn’t bothering anyone by foregoing some meals. Her mother disagreed and called her out every time, humiliating her into her second coping mechanism, smoking.

There were the times when Scully was really young and enticed by her sister’s cigarettes, but that was simple preteen rebellion. What developed when Dana was seventeen was something different entirely. A survival mechanism with poison inside, snuffing herself out while keeping her alive and sane. She would walk to the gas station and buy packs of Marlboros with coins from her piggy bank. The laws were lax in the 80s, the prices too. She would blow rings of smoke while walking home, then hide the pack in her bra and swish some mouthwash. She’d repeat the process to and from school, steadily acquiring a nasty nicotine habit. It continued until the summer before college, when she made herself go cold turkey so as not to take the habit with her. As far as she knows, neither her parents nor any of her siblings ever knew about it. 

It resurfaces in times of stress, though normally for no more than a single pack. Lately she’s accustomed to keeping a pack and a lighter with her at all times. Her building is smoke free so she steps outside, but her car is off limits because she doesn’t want the smell to cling to her. It is a hassle, but then again, so are most things. 

Missy knows about the poor eating habits--those are hard to hide from someone who shares the same space as you. Nevermind the fact that the scale shows six less pounds than before, and that adds up when the number’s not that large to begin with. Scully’s edges protrude now...that can’t be hidden. 

Missy never says a word. She remembers Dana complaining about their mother’s condescending comments about her weight, and she knows the damage that does to a young psyche. Instead, she offers. Healthy meals, guilty pleasure meals, all her sister’s favorites. She cooks more than she ever has before, well aware that her sister will struggle to refuse her. 

“I recognize what you’re doing,” Missy told her sister when she tried to turn away a caesar salad, of all things. “I’ve been known to do that too,” Missy admitted. “Eat. You’re hungry, you just think not eating will give you some form of control over your body, or your life...but wasting yourself away is letting the bastards win.”

And so she did, that time at least. Scully has enough shame regarding her habit to push it aside whenever confronted---that’s how she insists to herself that it’s not an eating disorder. She can stop on command. _ That makes it okay, right? _

Getting back into the office helped her a lot---you can’t starve yourself and function as an FBI agent. Besides, she would dissolve into thin air if Mulder figured out what she was doing. He was the one who batted around the idea of Scully helping prep each case and supervising any tests he might need the crime lab to do while he’s in the field. He understood that in lieu of therapy, she needed  _ something _ to take her out of her own mind.

It was as much for him as it was her; at this point, it’s almost incomprehensible to him that the X-Files had existed before her. Of course he was the laughingstock of the FBI! He had huddled in the basement by himself with UFOs and blurry Bigfoot sightings pinned on the wall like a shrine to his own delusion. 

Her fall from grace was his absolution. He’ll make an angel of her, somehow. Even if it means he has to meet the devil. 

Scully has no interest in becoming an angel, though she’d sure like to avoid hell, and that hasn’t worked out too well. Locker room jokes are one thing. Underestimation another. But assault? Rape? Trauma and torture because she is who she is doing what she does? She is not a quitter, and that is killing her.

Her barrenness haunts her because it was bestowed upon her as punishment, an implication that she only has worth as a walking womb. She wants to be seen as a person, not a pawn.

The arrival of the holiday season is another weight on her shoulders. It used to be Scully’s favorite time of year; now the sight of carolers makes her want to poke her eyes out. It’s the first Christmas without her father, and that is simply unimaginable. Her and Missy spent a quiet Thanksgiving with their mother---small portions and whispered thanks--in preparation for an elaborate family Christmas. Bill Jr. and Tara are flying in from California for the annual Christmas dinner and midnight mass. They will all try to move forward, pretend it’s just like any other year, but it’s not and it never will be again. Happy Christmases are over for the Scully family. 

And yet, they will try to enjoy the moment. Missy told her mom that she’s bringing a friend, which is completely true. Trinity is her closest friend that she doesn’t share blood with. That said, she plans to use the occasion to introduce Trinity as her girlfriend, come what may. 

Then there was the suggestion that their mother made, which caught her youngest daughter completely off guard. “Why don’t you bring Fox?” Margaret Scully proposed demurely during their weekly phone call. “I’m making a zoo’s worth of food, I could use another mouth to feed. I hate to see any of it go to waste.”

“Mulder’s spending Christmas with his family, I’m sure,” Scully had replied. “But I’ll pass along the offer.”

That was how Scully learned that Mulder’s family isn’t much for celebration, that he usually spends the holiday flipping between It’s A Wonderful Life and the 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story, and that he has a particular fascination with the idea of midnight mass. 

“I just don’t get it,” Mulder mused. “You believe that a jolly old man with flying reindeer leaves presents in your house, but you think he waits until  _ after _ you’ve gotten home from celebrating Baby Jesus’ birthday? Didn’t you ever look for his sleigh in the sky on the drive home?”

“No, Mulder,” Scully sighed. “I just believed that he knew when we were tucked in bed. Santa’s all-seeing, you know,” she teased.

Mulder chuckled. “Kind of presumptuous to assume he functions on your schedule, huh?”

Ultimately, Mulder said yes. He figured attending the Catholic equivalent of Jesus’ birthday party would be another check off his supernatural bucket list, though he did not say this part out loud for fear of Dana Scully’s wrath. Besides, what else was he gonna do on Christmas Eve? Shake the shoebox of junk he stuck under his mini-basketball hoop so he felt like he was getting a gift?

And so the fateful day arrives. Mulder flips his Garfield page-a-day calendar to December 24th, chuckles at the comic strip of the orange cat eating all his owner’s Christmas cookies, and makes his way to his partner’s increasingly familiar doorstep. The sun has already slipped behind the trees by the time he arrives. It gives up easily in the winter. 

He rings the bell and hears Scully’s dainty footsteps on the other side. She’s snuck up on him enough times for him to have developed a keen sense of her light footing--no more jump scares for him.

“Hey Scully,” he stammers as she opens the door. She had told him to look “festive,” so he donned his nicest green sweater (a gift from his mom from J. Crew...he had never worn it) and slacks. Scully rounds out their show of holiday spirit with a velvet red blouse and black trousers. 

“You look lovely,” Mulder says reflexively, unsure when he started using such a word. Scully pulls at her shirt, obscuring the bit of cleavage that has revealed itself. “Thanks Mulder,” she mutters, ushering him inside.

He holds up the shiny silver gift bag he hastily stuffed with tissue paper. “Some candy canes I picked up at the gas station. I figured the whole family could enjoy them.”

Scully nods, amused by his feeble attempt at gifting. “I’m sure they won’t go to waste.”

A fire crackles in the fireplace. It’s so hot in the apartment that Mulder is surprised it hasn’t melted the snow outside on the sidewalk.

“Where’s Melissa?” he asks, hoping they will hit the road sooner than later.

“She’s picking up her girlfriend from the airport. She couldn’t get an earlier flight.”

“Dulles?” He sure hopes not. It’s all the way across town.

“No, Reagan.”

_ Whew. Much closer. _

“She should be back any minute now,” Scully continues. “Trinity’s flight got in at 3:30.”

Mulder rolls his sleeves up. “So your family doesn’t know about Trinity?”

Scully shakes her head.

“Do they know that Melissa’s…” He gestures, unsure which word to fill the space with.

“Bi? No.”

“So she shows up with Trinity, and then what?”

Scully shrugs. “She introduces her as her girlfriend. Mom already knows Missy is bringing a guest so she’ll have a plate for her.”

“You’re not worried about how the family’s gonna react?”

“Well, I’m sure Bill is gonna be a dick about it, but that’s normal. We only see him once a year, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Bill’s your brother?”

“Uh-huh. And Tara is his wife. They got married about a year and a half ago.”

Even as he pushes into his thirties, it still surprises Mulder that anyone close to his age could be  _ married. _ He doesn’t even sleep in a bed. 

“You think your mom’s gonna be cool with Trinity?” he asks. 

“I think she loves her daughter enough to be.” 

“Mmm.” Mulder sticks his hands in his pockets. If only he had dilemmas like this. He imagines him and Samantha speculating about their mother’s reaction to Sam’s nose piercing or dyed hair or...anything really. He would give so much to have someone to laugh about his uncle’s sideburns with. 

His emotional deep-dive is promptly cut off by the entrance of Melissa and a brunette woman whose bangs graze her eyebrows, her hair falling just below her shoulder. “Hi!” she chirps, taking in the magnificence of Dana Scully. “Dana, I presume?” 

Scully nods.

“May I hug you?” Trinity asks, hazel eyes shining. 

“Sure,” Scully says, feeling the brisk air against Trinity’s coat as she’s pulled in. 

Scully lets go first, and Trinity takes that as a cue to pull away. “You look just like Mel, wow,” she remarks, fighting the urge to run her fingers through Scully’s hair.

Scully smiles softly. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, it is,” Trinity assures, exchanging a gooey gaze with Missy. Next, her attention falls upon Mulder, who does an awkward half-wave. “Hello!” She points between Mulder and Scully. “Boyfriend?”

Mulder chokes. Scully picks up his slack--”Oh, no. This is Fox Mulder, my partner at the FBI.”

“Ahh,” Trinity smiles knowingly. “Yes, I’ve heard about you. I didn’t know you would be joining us for Christmas.”

“Christmas is not exactly my family’s cup of tea, so I figured I’d get an authentic experience with the Scullys.”

“Same! I’m looking forward to Mama Scully’s ginger snaps. I’ve heard fantastic things about them.” 

Mulder elbows his partner playfully. “Damn, Scully! How could you leave me in the dark about ginger snaps?”

Scully rolls her eyes but smiles. “I apologize, Mulder. Though for the record, the fruitcake is better.”

“Says no one, ever,” Mulder teases. 

She grins.  _ Now this is Christmas. _

\---------------------

Taking a seat at Margaret Scully’s dinner table feels like existing inside a Christmas movie, in Mulder’s mind. Fancy china, green and red serving platters, paper mache snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, and a porcelain nativity scene; the dining room has it all. Not to mention the heaping piles of food there for the taking...if this is Christmas, Mulder wants in every year. 

Scully does not share his cinematic fantasy. She knows better, having actually attended one of her family’s dinners before. Bill will get too drunk and start saying whatever comes to mind, their mother will laugh along like he’s still a five year old babbling about nothing (as opposed to the thirty-something spewing bullshit that he  _ actually _ is), Missy will attempt to debate him to get him to shut up (which never works), and she will sit there and wish to be somewhere,  _ anywhere _ else. And all without their father to hold the reins and keep a fight from breaking out. 

The night has gone smoothly enough, Scully supposes. Missy introduced Trinity as her girlfriend in a very non-ceremonial way, forcing Bill and their mother to nod and accept it, in the moment at least. Mulder received a hug from Margaret and a pat on the shoulder from Bill, so pretty much the highest token of approval. Mulder’s candy canes earned a place in the center of the dessert table, which gave him way more satisfaction than it should have, and he couldn’t help but feel that if they were to vote on favorite man at the party, he would win. A room with Bill Jr. in it is probably the only place he would ever earn this honor, and he’ll take that.

Yet everything unwinds as Scully suspected. Bill waits until everyone has packed plates and full mouths to unleash his particular hyperfixation for the night.

“Trinity?” he questions, raising his fork diagonal across the table toward her. “Is that your name?”

Trinity smiles and nods, oblivious to what she’s in for. 

“And you know Melissa how…?”

She pats a napkin to her mouth. “We worked at the same restaurant in Oregon.”

He chuckles gruffly. “What was it, one of those gay bar things?”

“No, an Italian bistro,” Trinity continues calmly. 

Missy, however, is not so calm. “Gay people can go places other than gay bars,” she retorts. “We’re not segregated. Though I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Bill sets a fist on the table, clanging his silverware. “Yeah,  _ that’s  _ what I said. Why the hell do you insist on being so politically correct all the time? I’d shoot myself.”

“Gee, maybe you should try it sometime.”

“Now Melissa…” Margaret Scully’s voice rises above the clamor.

“I have the right to defend my girlfriend and I against Bill’s thinly disguised homophobia,” Missy responds.

“You act like I give a damn what you and your  _ friend _ do,” Bill sneers. “That’s not my business.”

“Then stop pretending like it is.”

“Oh boo-hoo, little Missy thinks the world revolves around her.”

“Bill, honey, I think that’s enough,” Tara says, laying a protective hand on his arm.

“You’re right.” He raises his can of beer toward Mulder. “Whaddya doin here, hot shot? Trying to seduce my sister?”

Scully frowns, but doesn’t say anything, pushing food around on her plate.

Mulder seems rather unbothered by Bill’s advances. He chuckles. “Actually, I think it’s the other way around.”

Bill snorts. “That’s a likely story.”

“You don’t think I’m worth your sister’s time?”

“I don’t think  _ Dana _ thinks you're worth her time. You’re not her type.”

“I am sitting right here, you know,” Scully says, staring daggers at her brother.

“Then tell us Dana! Is hot shot here your type?”

Her eyes brush Mulder’s face. His cheeks flush, reddening like a stormy sunset. She wishes she could read his mind. The safe answer and the true answer are not often the same. “I think Mulder is a wonderful man. I’m very lucky to know him,” she answers stiffly, her annoyance aimed at Bill. 

“Oh, the old run-around!” Bill scraps his fork against his plate. ”Typical.” 

Scully grabs her now empty canned cocktail and sulks into the kitchen, leaving her chair pushed away from the table. Everyone watches her go, but Bill gives off the only visible reaction. He laughs. “Scared her away. Thought it would take more.”

Mulder and Melissa exchange a glance. She nods, granting him permission to play knight-in-shining-armor. Quietly, Mulder slips out of his chair and pushes it back into place. He catches the kitchen door as it swings closed behind his partner.

Her anger concealed from the rest of the family, Scully drops her can in the recycling bin with a bang. She ignores Mulder, instead opening the refrigerator and pulling out another cocktail, saying nothing.

“What is this, your fifth drink?” Mulder brushes his hand over her shoulder, and she recoils. “Leave me alone, Mulder.” She slams the fridge and tries to turn around, but he’s cornered her. 

“C’mon Scully, Bill’s harmless. He doesn’t bother me.”

“It’s not fucking about Bill,” she fumes, alcohol fizzing through her bloodstream. She inhales, trying to keep it together in front of the man who has done nothing wrong to her. “Please get out of my way.”

“What’s wrong?” He frames her shoulders with his hands, creating their own little bubble. 

“Don’t touch me!” she growls. Mulder knows as soon as hears it: he will never forget the pure anguish in her voice. As she retreats to the corner, he looks down at his palms, the stovetop that burned her...he would cut them off if he could.

Unfortunately, the commotion attracts the Scully’s like a dog whistle. Bill leads the charge into the kitchen, getting a full view of his sister hunched over by the back door while her partner stands by the fridge like an idiot. “Ooo, a lover’s spat!” he exclaims, only nominally concerned about Dana’s well-being. 

“Shut up, Bill,” Missy hisses. To everyone’s relief, he does. 

Mrs. Scully comes forward, maneuvering around Mulder to get to her daughter. “Are you alright, Dana?”

Scully keeps her back to the crowd. “I just need a minute.” She taps her pocket, confirms that she slipped her pack of cigarettes in. “I’ll be outside. Everyone can go back to dinner, please.”

She twists the doorknob and steps onto the back deck without waiting for any response. Mulder feels the tug of tears in his throat, like a dormant animal waking up in him. He is used to being hurt (though not by Scully, never her), but inflicting the hurt is a whole other beast. He doesn’t know what he’s done, but he doesn’t need to. The look in her eyes, put there by what he thought was a harmless touch, made his heart tremble. He is frozen in place, grateful when Melissa appears at his side as the rest of the party returns to the dining room. 

“I didn’t mean to upset her, I was trying to make her feel better about Bill…” he laments.

“I’m sure, I’m sure. It’s not you specifically, she’s going through a lot right now--you know.”

Mulder rubs his neck. “I don’t know if I do.”

“She hasn’t shared her diagnosis?”

His eyes nearly pop out of their sockets. “Diagnosis?! Is she okay?”

Missy sighs. “I think you two need to talk. If she gets pissed, tell her I sent you.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Tell me if she’s okay.”

“She’s okay. It’s not fatal or anything.”

“She would tell me, if it was...wouldn’t she?”

Missy bites her lip. “I don’t know, Fox--- _ Mulder.  _ I would hope so, but I was under the impression you already knew about this, and you see how that’s gone.”

Mulder turns toward the back door, desperation living in his voice. “I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta check on her.” 

Missy nods. “Don’t let her weasel her way out of this one. I’m expecting a heart-to-heart, mushiness and all.”

“Aye aye, captain.”

He turns the back doorknob and slips through the door, trying to imitate his partner’s ninja skills. The old wood on the door frame shakes as he shuts it. He winces--so much for the sneak attack.

Mulder follows the arc of the deck, winter’s bite colliding with him. He didn’t have a chance to grab his jacket, and now that he’s thinking about it, Scully didn’t either. He can grin and bear it but she is all skin and bones, now more than ever. It scares him to see her like that, but it’s none of his business, he feels, to comment on her body. He can break her fall, but he must not provide an extra push.

The wind has no friends to protect nor foes to defeat, so it will give away anyone. It carries the unmistakable tarnish of smoke to Mulder’s nose, an ashy haze that has come to remind him of Skinner’s office and the shadow lingering in the corner. He almost expects to find him there with his Morleys and his sadistic laugh. Instead, he finds a redhead and her Marlboros shrinking against the December cold snap. 

“Bum a cig, ma’am?” He scoots up to her, ready to retrieve his own smoke from her long, slender fingers.

“Mulder!” She pulls the cigarette away from her, holding her last puff captive in her lungs. 

He wiggles his fingers like an impatient child. “We’re all gonna die someday, right?”

Her jig up, she rolls her shoulders back and releases the smoke with a great rise and fall of her chest. It mingles in the air with the chill of her breath, becoming one and the same as they leave the contours of her body. Head tilted back and lips parted, she is alive with nicotine’s ease and intoxication’s freedom. 

It is better than porn, according to one Fox William Mulder. He’ll keep this observation to himself for now.

“Did your parents never teach you that sharing is caring?” he rambles. “C’mon, give me a light!” 

“It’s a nasty habit, Mulder.”

“I’m a connoisseur of those,” he replies loosely. “Now, you’re not gonna make me put you in a headlock are ya?” 

Scully rolls her eyes. She’s never felt less threatened in her life. “You’re exhausting, do you know that?”

“I’ve heard it a time or two.”

She pulls a cigarette from her carton and slips it into his fingers. They are warm; hers are ice-cold. “I wanted to be alone.” She hands him the lighter, watches as he generates heat from thin air.

He lights his cig and sticks the lighter in his pocket rather than handing it back to her. “According to my calculations, you should be very drunk right now. Other than your Oscar bait performance back there, you’ve got things pretty under control I’d say.”

Scully gestures at her cigarette smoking, teeth chattering self. “Yeah, I’m the picture of health.”

“Do you have some exceptional alcohol tolerance I should know about, because that’d make you very valuable in undercover work.”

Scully gazes out into the distance. She’d smile if she were to look at him right now, and that doesn’t feel right for the situation. “Those drinks have low alcohol content, Mulder. You can buy them at Dollar General.”

“You ever looked at their hand sanitizer? It’s like 95% alcohol.” 

“Well, now I know where you go to get your fix.”

He chuckles. “You got me.”

She stuffs her hands in her pockets and he wishes,  _ god he wishes, _ that he had grabbed his jacket. He’d take off his sweater if she wanted him to--stand there with his bare chest to the cold--but he has a feeling that would only exacerbate the situation.

He tries a more gentlemanly route. “Do you want me to grab your jacket? I won’t give away your trade secrets.”

She folds herself together. “No, it’s okay. It’ll make me get a move on at some point.”

They stand united in their rebellion, blowing smoke and freezing their asses off. Who needs Christmas cheer when you’ve got Christmas resentment?

Mulder sways a bit to keep his blood circulating. He is careful not to bump her. “You wanna tell me why you’re out-Scrooging Scrooge this year?” he prompts as gently as he can.

“In case you haven’t noticed, it hasn’t exactly been the best year of my life.”

“I gathered that, yeah.”

“And it’s the first Christmas without my father…” her voice warbles. 

“Shit, right. I’m sorry,” Mulder murmurs. 

“...So it just doesn’t feel very celebratory.” She takes a long drag. Mulder can tell that this secret smoking habit is not new to her, and he wonders when she picked it up, how long she has kept it from him.

He takes a deep breath, watches as it is written in the air. “Melissa told me you received a diagnosis, and I think we’ve already established that sharing is caring…”

Scully looks him in the eyes for the first time since he joined her. It has the sudden intensity of a black-and-white film, Scully the 1940s scarlet and he the leading man who pales in comparison to her. There is no one he’d rather be overshadowed by.

“It’s humiliating,” she croaks. “Missy and my mom are the only ones who know.”

“I’ve got the monopoly on humiliation in this partnership, so I wouldn’t worry about that,” he says, flicking some ashes to the ground. 

“This is a particular form of humiliation you can’t experience, I’m afraid. Or at least, it wouldn’t impact you the same way.”

“Let’s hear it.”

She sighs. “My abductors removed all of my eggs, causing my menstrual cycle to shut down and me to enter perimenopause.”

His breath catches in his throat. “Jesus christ.”

“ _ Uh-huh.” _

He throws his cigarette on the ground and stamps it out, though it could have burned longer. “That’s fucking horrifying, Scully. You’ve got to inform the Bureau. We’ve got to catch these--whatever they are. We’ve got to make them pay.”

“No, Mulder. It’s too much. I don’t want to keep reliving it, I want to be able to move on with my life.”

“How can you move on when they’re still out there, probably doing it to more women?”

She shakes her head, feeling the snag of tears and holding them back for fear they might freeze on her face. “I don’t know, but I can’t think about it like that. It sort of...shatters everything, the idea that this could be a phenomenon happening to other women in secret. I wouldn’t believe it if it didn’t happen to me. I  _ still _ don’t believe it.”

Mulder shudders. He can’t discern whether it’s from the cold or their conversation. “Do you think it was men who took you? Or do you believe Duane Barry?”

“It seems like a level of monstrosity that only man could achieve. It requires a certain understanding of society, gender roles...dehumanization that only humans could perpetuate.”

Mulder nods. Her reasoning tracks, but the thought of him failing to outsmart  _ humans _ who stole away his partner is something he cannot fully process. It makes sense that he couldn’t find her if she was in space, but if she was on the face of the Earth, he had no damn excuse. 

“You were just gone, Scully...you were just gone.” His aching is so palpable, his voice a cliff’s edge they could both tumble down. 

“I know I was.” She takes one last puff, then lets her cigarette fall to the ground. She crushes it with her heel, her force premeditated and brutal. That pain is for the ones who took her, the ones who have obviously never loved a thing at all. 

Head bowed, she moves toward the door, but not without grasping for Mulder’s elbow, assuring that he is following behind. He is and he will be, for as long as she lets him.

Inside, the home’s manufactured warmth hits them, unreal in comparison to the cold they have known. The kitchen is as quiet as it was before their ordeal, the dining room empty aside from Mrs. Scully clearing serving platters. 

“Where did everyone go?” Scully asks, momentarily alarmed that she may have ruined the entire gathering.

“We’re going to drive around and look at lights before mass. Everyone’s getting ready.”

“Oh.” She looks to Mulder, as if to check that he hasn’t left her stranded. “I think I’ll stay here,” she tells her mother. “Make a cup of hot chocolate and relax for a bit.”

“Well, you’ll be missed. Fox, would you like to join us?”

He takes a leap, hopes he’s got the right idea. “I’ll stay here, but thank you.”

“As you wish,” Mrs. Scully says with a slight smile. Mulder had never noticed her resemblance to her daughter until that moment. It was like looking at a sketch of a famous painting; the lines are there but the colors missing.

Soon enough the crowd leaves and Scully and Mulder settle on the couch with mugs of hot cocoa. Margaret Scully’s tree forms the centerpiece of the living room, and it’s hard not to admire its gold and red decorations and the shiny angel on top. 

“That’s gorgeous. Does she do it every year?” Mulder asks, ignoring the steam rising out of his mug and going right in for the kill. 

Scully nods. “Every year since we were kids. There used to be a lot more homemade ornaments, but I guess she swapped those for a more elegant look now that we’re grown.”

“Well, it’s beautiful.” He looks at her, curled up with the glow of the fireplace falling upon her, and he feels warmth and safety like never before. It would be so easy to slip in “and so are you,” it is practically begging to be said. But she wouldn’t believe him if he said it now; she would think it was a pity compliment. Instead, he mouths the words, and she is not looking, and that is okay.

She snuggles deeper into the cushions, closing her eyes and letting her mind wander. She is the most at ease she has been in months--here in the house she lived in during high school with the fireplace crackling and her partner by her side--and that’s not what she expected from Christmas Eve. Heaven strokes her skin, and she blinks her eyes open to find Mulder tucking her in with her mother’s microfiber blanket. She smiles her soft Scully smile. “Thank you,” she coos, burrowing herself deeper into the blanket’s embrace. 

“You’re welcome,” Mulder whispers into her ear. His fingers tangle in her hair as he pulls her toward him, his lips meeting her temple. She catalogues the feeling for her memory bank: chapped but carrying the hot chocolate’s warmth. She will spend the next while convinced that it was a dream, a fleeting image in the moments before sleep, but she will carry the feeling until she feels it again. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the new year beckons Scully to put her life back together, she and Mulder share a Valentine's 'anti-date' on the Hoover Building rooftop.

The new year struck Scully with a particular melancholy. 1994 was, to put it plainly, one of the worst--if not the worst--year of her life. Even without her disappearance, it would earn that title. Her father’s untimely passing and the brief but brutal closure of the X-Files wrenched the few good things left from her fingers. Factor in the four weeks in late summer that she has no memory nor knowledge of, and you’ll understand why Scully has taken to calling it her year on the dark side of the moon.

Of course, the aftershocks of her abduction are still felt every day. Flipping the calendar does nothing to remedy that. At her last appointment, Dr. Zapolsky noticed that Scully’s weight had decreased rather sharply from previous visits and made the point that “rapid weight loss can stop ovulation,” which Scully interpreted as kicking her while she was down. That’s not exactly fair, after all.  _ Technically, _ her period stopped well before she decided to restrict herself. 

It’s odd how it happened. Her weight was fine before her abduction; slender but within the healthy range for her height. Even when she was returned, it had only dropped a couple pounds, as if they fed her...as if they cared.  _ She found that hard to believe. _ In the months afterward, she sought a physical representation of her mental anguish, and since she and food were never on the best terms to begin with, the choice was simple.

The other day, she had to punch an extra hole in all her belts to hold them steady on her hips. She knows the consequences of this; she’ll live them and accept it. 

There has been some beneficial progress. Dr. Zapolsky started Scully on low-dose birth control around Thanksgiving, hoping that it would balance her hormones and regulate her periods. It has, in fact, brought back her cycle, something that Scully did not expect. She gave Melissa her leftover tampons in October. Now Melissa buys enough for the two of them and insists that Scully doesn’t owe her a dime. Scully is too grateful for this to speak about it.

Her downward spiral reached a snag when she realized that smoking would make her birth control ineffective, shortly after her and Mulder’s Christmas Eve smoke break. She ditched the cigarettes, mad at herself for taking a month to read the disclaimer (she’s a doctor for god’s sake, she should know better!), yet glad to have an out. Smoking was a habit she exercised because she could.  _ It won’t hurt her anytime soon, and millions of others do it, so where’s the harm?  _ That was her thinking. As soon as she had a reason to stop, she did, and it felt a bit like jumping from a runaway train just before it skids off the tracks. 

So she is better, and she is worse. Which really means she is the same as she was. That is the conclusion she carries into 1995’s frosts and thaws. 

There is one thing she is certain of, something that she hadn’t given much thought to until the one year anniversary of her father’s death. She needs her faith back. She’s always practiced in a cyclical pattern, her devoutness orbiting in and out like the moon around the Earth. Sometimes closer and brighter, sometimes farther away, sometimes nowhere to be found.

She has to believe it will come back; it always does. She was made in God’s image, and her father’s. This is both a blessing and a curse.

But no one can be God, and she can’t be her father either. His faith never wavered. If hers was the moon--fickle and subject to doubt--his was the sun, steady and warming everything around it. This was a quality she was envious of, and then guilty in her blasphemy. She has never managed to feel completely content inside the bounds of piety like he could. She’s constantly shaking the devil off her back, then repenting for it, then wondering if it were all worth it. What if...what if...what if...she isn’t fully persuaded in her beliefs, and she knows that this is the worst sin of all. Like Mulder though, she wants to believe, and shouldn’t that count for something?

Imperfection is allowed. Understood, even. Doubt is not as permissible. “He who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind,” the Bible says. Sometimes Scully takes that to mean she should walk into the ocean. Then she realizes that would be blasphemous too. 

Some people believe without trying. Her father was one of those. Mulder too, in a different way. She used to think that she was too. Now she’s not so sure. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” How many times has she read that line? Has she ever lived up to it? She’s seen and still not believed. Certainly that means she’s going to Hell.

Or is she already there?...She wonders that sometimes. Maybe she didn’t make it back from the other side. Maybe the devil just wanted her to believe that she had, and so he’d constructed some kind of diorama of Scully’s life that would go wrong bit by bit, boiling her like a gradually heated bathtub. No resting in peace for the unbeliever.

She can’t imagine a worse punishment than all the potentially good things in her life getting dismantled beyond her control. She’d rather never experience them at all than know their joy then watch them fall apart. Missy would kill her if she heard this, but you can’t please everybody.

It is at this point that Scully embarks on her chosen method of religious self-flagellation: going through the Ten Commandments and determining whether she’s violated them.  _ Count up your sins and God won’t have to _ ; practically the tagline of the Catholic faith.

She thinks she does okay with the first few. She has no idols, she honors her mother and father, and Mulder knows not to call her on Sunday mornings. Of course, the part about not taking the Lord’s name in vain can be tricky, but she’s working on it. 

Number five is where it gets dicey. _ Thou shalt not kill. _ She imagines that she wouldn’t, not on purpose, but the circumstances of her job worry her. God makes no exceptions for self-defense. And what if she were ever to be a true doctor? If she couldn’t save a patient, does that mean she killed them? 

Her father was in the Navy. He never killed anyone.

Number six...well, she doesn’t mention that often. Few people know about Daniel. Missy is one. Scully harbors a genuine shame regarding that time in her life, not so much because of Daniel, but because she was complicit in hurting his wife and daughter. It was a young, foolish mistake that she never wants to make again. 

She feels pretty good about number seven. The only thing she has ever stolen is one of Charlie’s matchbox cars when they were kids. She was uninterested in Missy’s hand-me-down Barbies and Raggedy Ann dolls. The boys’ toys were much cooler. She trusted the Lord enough to know that He wouldn’t hold something she did when she was seven against her. Besides, she gave it back when Charlie figured out it was missing. She just wishes he had let her play with him after that.

Number eight: thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. She considers honesty one of her best qualities. She sure hopes God does too. She’s not the most open person, but that’s different from lying…

Nine is a lost cause, considering six had been broken. This was her least favorite part of her family’s religion: the power it had to cause her shame about her own body, her own desires. She had her first crisis of faith over this at age 14. Missy comforted her with something she has never forgotten: “The original sin was the serpent’s deception, not Eve’s desire. Even God pins it on the woman.” She knew her sister could only say that because she didn’t truly believe and wasn’t trying to, but it had stuck with Scully through many moments when she needed it. 

And finally, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. She supposes she did this with the matchbox cars when she was seven, but in literal terms that’s about it. Metaphorically, she does this all the time and struggles with why she feels so inadequate. Her sister’s confidence, Mulder’s tenacity, her father’s faith...The ideal Dana Scully would have all of these. The real one is a work in progress.

\--------------------

So it goes that she finds herself prepping a case in the office on Valentine’s Day. Mulder’s scheduled to fly to Florida the next morning to investigate attacks in a community of circus performers. He’s convinced it’s the Fiji Mermaid, she’s convinced he needs to get his head checked; the usual. This is one comfort Scully can always rely on. No matter how utterly twisted her life gets, she will always think Mulder is crazy, and he will always go along with it. 

The occasion of the day goes unmentioned until what Mulder lovingly refers to as “closing time,” which is not a specific time but rather the point that he finally gives up for the day, usually hastened by his partner’s prodding. Scully has learned the signs of his dwindling tenacity by now. She glances at the clock as he pulls his glasses off his head and tosses a sunflower seed in the wastebasket, pleasantly surprised that it reads only 5:15. He catches her checking, his eyes--amber today--meeting hers.

His lips curl in amusement. “You got a date or something?” 

“No,” she blinks, feeling like a child caught taking a cookie from the jar. Her cheeks grow hot, threatening to make a scene. “I figured you did, since you’re finishing up so early.”

Mulder straightens his stack of papers, clinking them against the desk obnoxiously. “Think again, buckaroo.”

He’s taken to calling her that lately. Neither one of them is sure why, it just popped into his mind one day and stuck. It makes her feel like a heroine in some 70s Western shoot-out flick who wrangles all the bad guys and locks’em in the county jail. She’s thankful that  _ someone _ can see her for what she could be rather than what she is. It helps her see that too. 

He stuffs his papers in a manila folder, then rises from behind the desk and stoops toward the backpack he prefers to a briefcase. (She called him a kindergartener once because of it and he remarked that he’d ‘rather be a kindergartener than an adult.’ She couldn’t argue with that.) “Valentine’s Day isn’t really observed under the Fox Mulder calendar,” he says, unzipping the bag and putting the folder in. “Halloween and Thanksgiving, those are _ my _ holy days.” 

“You worship at the shrine of the food pyramid,” Scully smirks. 

“Yes indeed. Wait--” Scully’s gaze flicks to him, genuinely concerned. He dissolves her uncertainty with a boyish grin. “--does the food pyramid include candy?”

She rolls her eyes, but it’s not deeply felt. She misses these flat-lining comedic routines of his, usually at their best when they’re putzing through some tumble-weed town where the bathroom stalls at the gas station don’t lock. He loves being the funniest person in a ten-mile radius, and that’s not a satisfaction he can have in DC. She wonders if he tells these lame jokes to strangers now, or if they were just for her. 

“Speaking of food,” he says, brushing a hand through his hair, “you wanna grab dinner?”

Scully’s forehead creases. “Like, in a restaurant?”

“I mean, I wasn’t gonna be that forward, but I guess we could take it to yours or mine...”

Scully laughs lightly, wrapping her arms around herself, fingers caressing her bony elbows. “We’ve already covered what day it is,” she demures. “Everyone having dinner is going to be on a date.”

“You’re right...the restaurant probably won’t let us in unless we make out in front of the hostess,” he deadpans. 

“Not to mention that we don’t have any reservations…”

“Well, making out might remedy that, depending on the hostess.”

She gives him her ‘last straw’ look--crossed arms, arched eyebrow, stinging glare--and he raises his hands in surrender. “I’ll stick to slipping a twenty, then.”

Scully uncrosses her arms and slinks toward her purse rather languishly. “No restaurants, Mulder. It’s too much trouble on a holiday.”

“I sure hope you didn’t mistake my suggestion as an invitation to Mulder’s Downhome Country Kitchen, cause that place is  _ not  _ Michelin star rated.”

“I’m well aware. I’ve seen the menu.”

“Is Chateau de Scully open tonight?” he asks with an eyebrow raise that his partner couldn’t have missed if she tried--and she did. 

“Well, the chef is celebrating Valentine’s Day with her girlfriend in Oregon, so you’d be waiting awhile for your meal.”

“There’s no back-up chef? I don’t know, someone who may need to feed herself while the chef is away?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t serve the public.”

_ “Ouch.” _

He plucks their respective coats off the rack, folding his own over his arm and throwing his partner’s over her shoulders. She jumps just the tiniest bit--she probably thinks he didn’t notice, so he’ll pretend he didn’t--then slips her arms in the sleeves and pulls it on properly.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, avoiding eye contact.

After he’s put his own jacket on, he hoists up his backpack, fielding off his partner’s near swerve into laughter. She’s barely maintaining a straight face, and even if it’s at his expense, he loves it because unadulterated joy is something she deserves so much. 

“You know what, I’ve got just the solution,” he says as he strolls out the doorway, flipping the light switch as he goes, leaving Scully scrambling in the dark. 

“Hey!” 

He hears her petulant voice, followed quickly by the laugh he was looking for. When she turns to him after locking the office door, her eyes are still shining from the momentary euphoria.  _ He is so happy to know her. _

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this place is the Smithsonian of vending machines.”

“Mm-hm.”

“And I know a door to the rooftop that never gets locked.” He flashes her a sly look, his intentions pure despite himself. 

“It’s 40 degrees outside,” she counters before he can even voice his proposal.

“Sure, but we can make some fresh coffee, and there’s gotta be blankets in that storage closet of ours.”  _ Ours. _ Very few things are  _ theirs. _ She wishes he would say it again.

As much as her instinct is to protest, she can’t quite muster the resolve to. I mean, it checks all the boxes. It’s not a restaurant, she’d only have to eat a snack from the vending machine, and she wouldn’t have to spend Valentine’s night alone, which is a sneaky sadness that had been pressing at the back of her mind.

“Fine,” she bluffs, as if it were a great inconvenience to her. She enjoys the cat-and-mouse game, what can she say? “You find the blankets, I’ll get the coffee.”

Mulder smiles, his lips edging over his teeth in an aesthetically pleasing way that makes Scully feel like he missed his calling as a male model. Of course, this smile isn’t posed. The constant in his life is his partner’s unpredictability. Everyone thinks she’s a stone-cold skeptic, but he knows she’s an uncertain believer, and there’s no one harder to pin down than that. Her yes to his Valentine plans may as well be an admission that Bigfoot exists. 

“Let’s meet by the sixth floor stairwell, okay?” he prompts, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

Flashes of Christmas Eve sabotage her thoughts--her mother’s kitchen, her untidy tipsiness, Mulder just trying to iron things out. He’d touched her, and she’d lashed out at him.  _ Reaction formation _ , that was the term for the defense mechanism she’d used. He knew it, probably studied it extensively.  _ Concealing an impulse by acting out its opposite. _

Instead of mentioning this, she looks him in the eyes and says, “Okay, I’ll use the coffee machine on the sixth floor then,” as if his touch hadn’t brought forth both memory and desire. 

“Great. See you there.” He pulls finger guns, and she thinks that maybe this is already her best Valentine’s Day yet.

\------------------------------------------------

Five stories of stairs is a long way to go with two hot mugs of coffee. Scully had hoped there would be some styrofoam cups--something she could put a lid on--but the Bureau is stingy, so she had to go all the way back to the basement, grab their coffee mugs, take the elevator back to the sixth floor, brew some dark roast (to Mulder’s probable discontent), then hope that by some miracle, they could make it to the roof. 

Ever the idealist, Mulder takes the challenge in stride. Though his arms are already bundled with some comforters he found tucked away in storage (he shudders to think how old they must be), he takes the handle of his mug, squeezing the blankets snug against his chest. 

“Are you sure about this?” his partner asks with her usual uneven tone. “What if we get all the way up there and the door is locked?”

“We knock and get the snipers to open the door for us,” he answers matter-of-factly.

Scully’s eyebrows shoot up. “ _ Snipers?” _

“Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? There’s a longstanding rumor about snipers on the roof that I’d like to get to the bottom of.”

His demeanor is just loose enough to make Scully question whether he is in fact kidding. A conversational casualness permeates all of his sensational soliloquies because to him, the phenomena he’s discussing should be regarded as a fact of the world. If he ever launched into an indifferent lecture on the subject, she’d know he was bluffing.

Having never heard the rumor herself, she decides this is simply a figment of his overactive imagination. She’ll play along. “Well, if it’s anything like the talk of you being spooky, then it doesn’t look good for us…” she teases, her own smirk eliciting an identical one from her partner. 

Masking his impatience by embodying the role of the gentleman, Mulder uses his free hand to prop open the stairwell door, ushering his partner through. The landing of each story has one stray light bulb, there for show more than anything. Most of them are either flickering or burned out, the agents discover as they inch their way up, one slowly taken step at a time. Step, pause for the coffee to settle, hope it doesn’t breach its container, step: that’s the process they adopt for approximately 100 steps in the cold Hoover stairwell. There are many ways to show love; Mulder bets that you wouldn’t find this in any lame self-help book. 

“Do you think Romeo would have done this for Juliet?” he muses.

“Depends on what he was expecting once they made it to the top,” Scully quips, the edges of her lips turning up slightly.

Mulder nods, perpetually amused by her (too) infrequent jaunts into suggestive territory. “My man really got ahead of himself with the whole ‘dying for her’ schtick.” 

“You’re one to talk.” 

Mulder eyes her. “Actually, I think it was you who was going to die for me.”

“Not  _ for _ you,  _ because of _ you.” Her statement is neither packed with malice nor free of blame. “There’s a difference.”

She may as well have shot him at point blank range; then at least she could see the bleeding. She didn’t mean to be so blunt, but he gave her the perfect setup. Mulder cauterizes his own wound, disguising his pain as a joke. “Damn, I was finally moving past that!”

“At least one of us was,” she says, her voice fluttering, and he knows she’s just teasing, but god,  _ what if she’s cauterizing her own hidden wounds? _

They reach the door labelled ‘roof,’ and Mulder can’t decipher what happens first, him putting his hand on the door handle or her placing a chilly hand on his cheek. Playing it back in his head later on he won’t even be able to figure it out-- it cut time loose from its axes in such a way. 

“Are you okay, Scully?” He’s not sure why  _ this _ is the first question out of his mouth, but it is.

“I need a hand warmer,” she murmurs. “The coffee’s already cooling off.”

All the while, Mulder is acutely aware that her hand’s still on his cheek and she’s got him propped against the door, and what does she want him to do with that information?

Her thumb grazes his mole, and it becomes clear to him that there are two ways this scenario could go, and if she doesn’t want the second one it’s imperative that she stop rubbing rhythmic circles into his skin.

He clears his throat. “Do you want to...do you want me to check for snipers?” Her touch continues, uninterrupted. 

“Is the door unlocked?” Her voice sounds airy and far away. She probably didn’t even hear his question. 

He pushes on the handle, confirming their freedom. “Yes ma’am,” he answers, fear of a sort edging him into total politeness. He is twelve tiptoeing through the too empty halls of his house, again.

“Let’s have a picnic,” she says, still light and airy, as if that weren’t the plan the entire time. Then, she breaks into sudden laughter, pulling her hand away from Mulder’s cheek in her fit. “We forgot the food!” 

She is back to normal now, his steadfast Scully with a side of joy. 

Half of him mourning for the otherworldly Scully and the moment that could have been, he laughs too. “There may have been some lapses in planning.”

“We can make do, can’t we?” There’s a glimmer in her eyes that suggests the moment is not as far gone as he believed.

“Cold coffee sounds like an enduring Valentine’s tradition,” he affirms.

They choose not to dwell on words like “enduring” and “tradition,” entering the chill of the Hoover Building rooftop on Valentine’s night. 

\------------------

They’re not that far above the city really--the Hoover’s no NYC skyscraper--but their heads are in the clouds, that’s for sure. It’s not the typical dinner date complete with melted candles and overpriced dessert and overly attentive waiters, but as it turns out, they would both hate that. After all, this is not a date, it’s a casual hangout between two coworkers who don’t have dates on Valentine’s Day. If anything, it’s an anti-date. That’s what they tell themselves.

February’s unrelenting chill swirls around them, catching Scully’s hair in playful tantrums and turning the two of them into life-size paperweights atop the blankets. More sensible people may call the night a bust, but not the Prince of Halloweentown and his esteemed guest. This unconventional adventure is exactly what they bargained for.

Scully looks to Mulder, who’s holding his coffee like it’s a beer. She smiles. That is so  _ him. _

She exhales, and her breath spells itself out on the air. She tilts her face to the sky, as if the sun might suddenly rise and bask her in its heat. Mulder notices and fixes his attention there too, happy to have an excuse to look skyward. It’s his outlet, like hers is the sea her father dedicated his life to. His preferred escape method is to fly away; hers is to drift off.

He forces himself back into the moment,  _ here, with her,  _ and the expanse of the sky. “I once spent fifty bucks on one of those ‘name a star’ certificates, and I can’t even see it because of the goddamn light pollution.”

“I think that’s really more about the gesture than anything else,” Scully replies, trying to soothe him as if this were actually a pressing problem. “Unless you bought it for yourself...?”

Mulder chuckles. “No, no. It was for an old girlfriend.”

Scully raises her eyebrows in amusement. “Did you name it after her?”

“No, we named it the Rhine star.”

A puzzled look passes between them. It gives him a twinge of joy that his partner is not the encyclopedia she seems to be. 

“After Joseph Banks Rhine, the founder of parapsychology,” he clarifies. “We were both fascinated by the field.”

“Oh.” She turns her face back toward the sky with the feeling of a kid who missed the winning word of the spelling bee. There are times when she is grateful she does not know everything, and times when she is not. Somehow, this is both. 

“I’ve thought about buying another one and naming it after Samantha,” Mulder continues, “but it feels too much like a grave marker.”

“I’d consider it a lovely tribute,” Scully counters, used to doing so. “But I’m thirty and I own my own gravestone, so take that with a grain of salt.”

It’s true--once Dana was returned, her mother couldn’t bear to look at the gravestone she’d had engraved in memory of her missing daughter, so she gave it to Mulder, who saw no logical place for it to go except the woman whose name it bore. Margaret hadn’t wanted her to know that it existed, that they’d gotten so far as considering her gone. While it brought Mulder no joy to present it to his partner, it served as a reminder of the miracle her survival was, and in such bleak times, they had both needed that. 

“It doesn’t scare me--the thought of dying,” Scully says to the stars. Mulder wonders if she meant for him to hear it. He wishes he hadn’t, but he’s met with the realization that she is trying to start a conversation when her eyes look into his.

He doesn’t know where to go with this, so he toes the line between deep and sarcastic. “I thought Catholics were all about that heaven and hell stuff.”

“Yes, but…”  _ where is the line between truth and blasphemy,  _ she wonders? Settling herself, she starts over. “I’ve lived both on Earth, so what have I got to fear?” She turns her glance to the blanket, as if shrinking out of the Lord’s sight. “Besides, sometimes I think I’m already there.” 

“Heaven?”

“No, Hell.”

He should have known. He grips the edge of his blanket, wondering why his parents had prioritized the sex talk but never explained what to do in a situation like  _ this. _ He has a psychology degree, sure, but he’s as much a psychologist as she’s a physicist. 

“There are periods of life, I think, where everyone feels like that,” he says in the most earnest voice he can conjure. “It’s just that nobody ever talks about it.”

“Did you feel like that with Samantha?” 

Leave it to Scully to turn a personal conversation back on him.

He bites his lip. “Yeah, yeah, I did. Still do, if I think about it too long.”

“How did you...move past it?” The lights of nearby buildings reflect off her blue eyes, galaxies to his black holes. He’d give anything to sluice the pain right from her heart. 

He’ll rely on his words instead, despite knowing there are depths they cannot touch. “I, uh, I didn’t really move  _ past _ it, I just moved. Kept moving, I guess. I found a place where I could make progress out of my pain. Here--the X-Files.”

Scully swallows hard, knocking back tears. "That’s the issue. I feel stuck. Just completely unable to go forward. There’s a current in my brain that keeps pushing me backward.”

Mulder lets out a deep breath, trying to take both their pain with it. “Have you considered seeing a therapist?” he asks delicately. “It sounds like you may have PTSD.”

“Over  _ what?” _ she practically snaps. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“That doesn’t mean you have no memories. Regression hypnosis could help recover repressed or unconscious memories, so you could understand exactly what’s bothering you.”

“You think I haven’t heard this spiel from Melissa?”

“I bet Melissa doesn’t have first-hand experience with it.”

“No, she doesn’t,” she murmurs in the tone of an apology. She knew that he had it, she had listened to the tapes. How could she let it slip her mind? It is uncouth of her to look down on his chosen method of healing.

Mulder isn’t bothered. He continues, “It helped me. Both in recalling the details of the experience, and in having a recorded recollection of it. It helped me feel less...insane.”

“Mmm.” If he were just a bit closer, she’d reach out and touch his hand.

“If anything, I wish I did it earlier.”

Scully’s understanding of him sharpens, like an ophthalmologist flipping the lens, making her vision clearer. Her gaze probes him, mutual souls recognizing mutual pain. 

“Hey.” He uses his extended wingspan to touch her shoulder with the care an older sibling would show holding their baby brother for the first time. She turns her head, their faces mere inches away from each other. His eyes are a dopey brown, his breath scented with coffee.

“Yes?” she says with a coquettish flitting of her eyelashes. 

“You should come back out on the road. I could use someone to shoot down all my wild whims.”

She can’t help but smile, though she keeps her mouth closed. “Tired of telling jokes to strangers who don’t laugh, are you?”

He smirks. “Well, yeah, that too.” He leans back a bit, putting enough distance between them to keep the sparks in check. “Of course, if you’re not ready, there’s no pressure. I just think you could use the change of scenery and--you know--companionship.”

She nods, looks out into the night. He’s got the pulse of her problems and the salve that could soothe them. “You’re right.”  _ How often does he get to hear those beautiful words come out of her mouth? _ “I need to get out of my cocoon, and I think I’m okay enough to do that now.”

“Yeah?” There’s a twinkle in his eyes, something like hope.

She laughs--catharsis manifest--and it’s like a sheen of light coming through a crack in her jagged surface. “ _ Yeah, _ Mulder. I’ll make the arrangements with Skinner.”

He pumps his fists in the air. “Hallelujah!” 

She hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her. Any stray thoughts she had of him being lonely she chalked up to her own delusions. 

“Florida is probably a lost cause,” she notes, “but after that…”

He nods, pats her shoulder. “After that.”

To have her back meant something like freedom. The X-Files had never been anything without her.  _ He _ had never been anything without her. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After shooting Mulder to prevent him from implicating himself in his father's murder, Scully takes Mulder & Melissa on a road trip to Albert Hosteen's Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during Anasazi/The Blessing Way!  
> TW: mentions of gun/shooting, death, funerals

His eyes flutter open to some place like Heaven, which pisses him off cause that’s not supposed to exist, and if it does, then how in the hell did  _ he _ make it here? A fiery-haired angel lays a gilded hand upon his chest, her touch made out of air. Tendrils of hair fall against her face, and Mulder wonders where one gets haircuts in Heaven. 

He must be floating on a cloud, so close to the sun that it is stained an earthly golden-yellow. His sky accommodation is not as comfortable as all those Renaissance painters made it look, and for that he feels deceived. Is the soul so solid that it is weighed down, even in Heaven? And if it is, well, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a soul?

He is fatigued, and it’s bullshit, in his opinion, that he could be dead and still feel anything but blissful numbness. He’s about to voice this particular grievance when he realizes where he is, and sure English is turning into a lingua franca of sorts, but something tells him that God isn’t spending his spare time teaching the angels the difference between too and to. So he keeps his mouth shut, unnerved by not knowing whether he’ll ever be able to speak his mind again. 

“Hey,” a soft voice breathes, and he’s surprised to understand it, but not altogether upset. He tries to respond, but his tongue has tethered itself to the base of his mouth.

“ _ Mulder… _ ” the voice says, and it registers in his mind that it’s not an angel--not technically--but Dana Katherine Scully, and my god, what atrocity has dared to send her to Heaven so damn soon? 

He coughs, then grumbles from deep in his throat. He’s got to be the most undignified person in this joint, and he can only hope his welcome dinner with God isn’t anytime soon. The angel’s hand that is actually his partner’s drifts over his forelock, her fingers guiding his hair back into its part. 

“Mulder, can you hear me?”

He nods, hungry for some sense of things.

“You were shot, Mulder. By me. Because you were acting very stupid.”

_ She killed him?!? _ Maybe he shouldn’t be so shocked by this, but he can’t help himself. And she’s here too, so how did that happen? Murder-suicide?

Her hand sweeps his shoulder, and he looks down to see the space where her bullet must have pierced him. Patched up right above his heart. He didn’t expect to carry wounds into the afterlife.

Her eyes meet his, blue as ever. “I’ve been taking care of you, and you’ll be just fine.”

His lips form an O, but no sound follows. 

“Let me get you some water.” Scully disappears from his line of sight, and he realizes that his cloud has a roof and an open door.  _ You can’t see those from the ground. _

Scully returns with a plastic water bottle. Deer Park, to be exact--another thing he didn’t expect to find in Heaven. She holds it to his lips, tilting the liquid gently into his mouth. He revels in it, vitality slowly being returned to him.

At last, his tongue functions as it should. “Where are we, Scully?” he asks, his voice creaky. He’s beginning to think it’s not Heaven after all, but the back of his partner’s Chevy. Which feels about as equally likely, if he’s honest.

“At a gas station In Texas, about two miles off I-40,” she answers, twisting the cap back on the bottle. “We’re headed to a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.”

Met with the realization that his life is not, in fact, over, Mulder tries to piece together the last moments he can remember. He squints, the sun outside the vehicle colliding with the darkness in his brain. He remembers a fever and a bed that was not his. 

“Did I sleep in your bed?” he asks, fairly confident that more important things before and after have slipped his mind.

“You did indeed,” Scully replies. And before he can get to it--”Melissa and I shared.”

“Ah.” He pushes himself up, every muscle in his arms rebelling. 

Scully pats his shoulder. “You should stay reclined.”

“I’m like a whale in a fish bowl back here,” he protests. And he’s not wrong, Scully knows this. To fit him in, she leaned his head against the driver’s side windowsill and let his bare feet push against the passenger side door, then said a silent prayer that there would be no potholes. 

“Why can’t I come up front?” he whines. “I’ll lean the seat back.”

“Because Missy’s sitting there.”

Mulder glances into the front, his expectations of privacy shattered. Still, an empty passenger’s seat meets his gaze. “Well, where is she then?” he pesters, more pointed than intended.

Scully chuckles. You can put a hole in the man’s chest, but you can’t take the restlessness out of him. “She’s inside getting snacks.” Scully smiles at her partner, fondness flowing out in a way she rarely lets it. He’s been out for a couple days now--and while she was closely monitoring him and knew he was okay--she’s so glad that he has come back to her. “Do you want sunflower seeds?” she asks with a sparkle in her eyes.

He nods. “Sp--”

“Spitz.” The moments that have gotten them there, that have indebted her with that knowledge, flash through her mind. “I know.”

And it feels almost prophetic, to Mulder, that she does. 

\--------------------

The plains of North Texas roll past them, headlights and moonlight meeting in a demure embrace. The two-lane road bears a great resemblance to many they’ve gone down in days past. There’s no one else in sight. 

Mulder has been relieved of his back seat duties, taking Melissa’s place at the passenger side so she could get some sleep. He’s slipped on the shirt Scully swiped from his apartment, a Knicks 1990 tee that she must have found in the corner of the living room where he throws his dirty clothes. He wonders if she even packed anything for herself before she hightailed it out of the city.

He couldn’t have imagined that punching Skinner would lead to his father dead, him shot by his partner, and them on the run across the country. And yet, there’s no place he’d rather be. The desert gifting them with a stunningly clear night, he’s opened the car’s sunroof and kicked back to stare up at the stars. The radio having long turned to static, quiet permeates the car.

“I’d gladly live in the middle of nowhere if I got this view every night,” Mulder remarks, drinking in the night sky.

Scully glances at him. There’s a rogue part of her brain that hoped he’d be looking back at her. Alas, the sky is his mistress. 

They continue barreling down the highway, about seven hours out from their destination. The speedometer reads 87 mph...Scully is prone to speeding when she can get away with it.

“Keep it up and we’ll beat the sunrise,” Mulder jests. 

“That’s the plan.”

Mulder pulls his seat back into place, popping suddenly into Scully’s peripheral vision. “Hey Scully, can I ask you a question?”

“If I said no, would that stop you?”

“Negative.”

“Go on, then.”

“Setting aside the  _ why _ \--though I’d be interested in that, too--how exactly did you decide that shooting me near the heart would be the safest bet?...Unless you  _ wanted _ to kill me.”

“Well, I was pretty certain I’d be able to remove the bullet with what you had in your apartment, since the wound isn’t near a bone. That also makes it easier to prevent infection.”

“So you either have an insane amount of confidence in your shot, or you don’t value me very much,” he quips.

Scully smirks. “Lucky for you, I consider target practice a great stress reliever.”

“Does the Bureau psychologist know that?”

She bats his arm playfully, the car swerving as she does.

“Hey, that’s no way to treat a patient. Now I know why you’re not practicing.”

“Oh, did I forget to mention…? I’ve decided that I prefer Dr. Scully to Special Agent Scully, so this is the last you’ll be hearing from me.”

Mulder chuckles, though the very idea that there could be any truth to that gives him a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. “There are millions of doctors out there,” he says, “and some of them aren’t even the cool type. Special Agent? That’s way sexier.”

“Oh, is that the metric we’re measuring at now?”

“That’s the metric I’m always measuring at,” he deadpans. 

“Mmm.” Scully looks at the rearview mirror, her sister’s steady-breathed sleep reflecting back at her.  _ Good.  _ She’d never hear the end of it if Missy overheard this conversation.

Mulder rubs his eyes, the events prior to his blackout having flowed back to him through the waking hours. “I’m sure I’ll regret asking this,” he begins, “but am I a fugitive?”

Scully glances out the driver’s window, as if she were going to change lanes though there is nowhere to go and no one else around. “I took your weapon to ballistics and proved it wasn’t the one used in the murder.” She says it so casually, Mulder notices, distancing them from the fact that the victim was his father. “But you’re still the only one placed at the scene, and it doesn’t look good that you called the police then ran. Still, the evidence implies that it wasn’t you. Of course, there’ll be suspicion…”

“Especially since we’ve both disappeared…”

“Hey, we’re on FBI business,” Scully declares. “We didn’t go through the official channels, but this  _ is  _ related to the X-Files.”

“Maybe Skinner will believe that if he hears it from you.”

“That’s what I’m banking on.”

Mulder smiles. She’s using her reputation to pull off a ruse. And damn, does that turn him on. 

He breathes in the scents of the car--the McDonalds fries they bought with Melissa’s credit card (just to be safe), his own eau de cologne from three days without a shower, but, above all, Scully’s sweetness.  _ Her, _ just...her. A hint of strawberry, a swipe of gardenia perfume, and her honey-suckle skin. Smoke was never a fitting scent for her, and he is glad she has given it up.

“I’m guessing it’s safe to say you never caught up to Krycek,” Mulder mutters, balling up the fast-food straw paper and tossing it in the air. “Unless you’ve got him in the trunk.”

Scully shakes her head. “No stowaways besides you. He ran off after I shot and catching him wasn’t exactly my top priority.”

“So you do value my life…”

Scully flashes a brilliant but bashful smile. “You caught me.”

What a relationship they have. They are each other’s slayer and savior; a cut of the knife stitched by a meticulous hand. Hurt then healed on the other’s command.

“ _ Fox… _ ” 

Mulder glances at the backseat. He finds Melissa sound asleep, snoring softly, and his gaze snaps back to the other Scully in the car. What glitch in the universe has led  _ her _ to address him by his dreaded name?

He has never been so sure as in this moment---his partner is an otherworldly being, something supernatural. Not an alien, nothing so sinister...but perhaps the angel he imagined, or a fairy who has guided mankind for millennia, or a genie granting his wishes in freeze-frames. She looks _through_ him...not in a way which makes him invisible, but one that takes the physical aspect out of it entirely. _She sees his soul_. He knows this.

“Fox,” she continues, layering on the vulnerability, “I’m sorry about your father. I know you loved him, above it all.”

Mulder pinches the bridge of his nose. “Something like that...I don’t know, honestly, that he ever loved me.” He looks at his lap. “He spent his last breath asking for forgiveness. You have to wonder what he’s done with his life to end up there.”

“It all becomes clear at the end,” Scully responds, not so much a hypothesis as a statement of fact, drawn from experience. “His regrets caught up to him, and he loathed some things he did while cursing himself for the things he left undone...And in that moment, an apology was all he could do to right some wrongs.”

Mulder looks at her through the corner of his eye, somewhat disturbed by the oracle she has become. “He asked me to forgive him,” Mulder replies. “That’s not the same as an apology.”

“Isn’t it, though?’

Mulder crosses his arms over his chest, the lumpy gauze of his wound rubbing him through his shirt. “Well, first of all, he didn’t even specify what I was supposed to forgive him  _ for, _ so I don’t see how that can yield any sort of apology. And the very fact that was saying it at the end of his life means that it wasn’t actually about soothing my feelings, but lessening his guilt. Really, it didn’t have a damn thing to do with me.”

“So you’re saying it was a selfish apology, and that doesn’t count.”

“Exactly.”

“So do apologies only work if the recipient accepts them?” Scully interjects. “Is there no value in the attempt?” 

Mulder bites his lip.

“I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate,” she clarifies. “I’m genuinely curious about what you think.”

He sighs. “I think...what matters is not necessarily if the apology is accepted, but the intent of it. Like in this case, it was ill-timed, and so I don’t accept it. Maybe if he had said it to me ten years ago, it would have mattered, even if I were too stubborn to accept it at the time.”

“So if your father had apologized to you ten years ago, you would accept it now that he’s dead…?”

Mulder shrugs. “I think I’d realize that he actually meant it, and so I should cut him some slack.”

“Interesting.” Scully says nothing else, keeping her attention straight ahead.

Mulder smirks. “You don’t agree with me, do you?”

She pulls her lips into a tightly-knitted line. “No, no, that makes sense. I just think there are instances when a poorly-timed apology is accepted, and what then? Is the inevitable misunderstanding that will result the recipient’s fault for being so naive? Or do they get to place all the blame on the dishonest person?”

“How about a little bit of both, ey? Spread the blame out nice and evenly. A sprinkle there, a pinch here...”

Scully cracks a smile. Of course he’d make  _ this  _ conversation dirty. “You know, you scare me sometimes, Mulder.”

And just like that, they’re back to his preferred name. He lets out a sideways smile. “Yeah? Why?”

“Because I think that maybe you’re truly crazy, you’re not just faking it.”

He laughs, deep and sudden. Pulled from the trenches of his being. “Glad to hear it,” he snickers. “Glad to hear it.”

\-------------------------

As the motorcycle rumbles over the desert dust, Scully wonders how she could be so stupid. Barely out of psychosis and she sends Mulder to a burial ground. She didn’t intend for it to be his final resting place. 

Eric had tried to warn him before the helicopter men, as he called them when describing the scene to Scully and Melissa, burned the place. But Mulder couldn’t hear him over the whirl of the blades--that’s what Eric suspected. As he recounted to the girls, the smoking man had threatened him, had laid a grotesque hand on him and forced him to show the way back to his house. They interrogated his father Albert and bruised and bloodied him. The conclusion, all around, was that nobody knew where Mulder was. Regardless of whether he had burned in that boxcar or somehow disappeared into the desert beforehand, he was gone.

Scully has a pretty clear idea of who’s responsible, and she wishes she had a helicopter she could ram into their dumb black helicopter to wipe them off the face of the Earth... and prevent them from wiping anyone else off the face of the Earth. Thwarting their ambitions will have to be enough.

_ But how? _ Desert heat mixes with smoldering ash as she stands over what’s left of the boxcar, making the moment unbearable. It is obvious to her that if Mulder was still in the boxcar when the ignitor went off, he is now dead. No human can survive that magnitude of burning--he would, in fact, be incinerated. Not a piece of him left behind, identifiable even to Scully’s trained eye. 

_ And if he wasn’t in the boxcar, if he heard the helicopter and gave himself over to the desert? What then?  _ Surely he would have found his way back to where she was standing by now. Surely she’d be able to see him, hear him, touch him. There’d be proof he was something more than ashes. Maybe even, he might have made it back to the motel. But Melissa is keeping watch, and she hasn’t said a word. Missy would not play games about this. 

Logic prevailing, as it often does with her, Scully lets Eric drive her back to the motel.  _ If he’s not here, then he’s there.  _ And if he’s not there then--well, she knows. And isn’t it just like Mulder to leave her enough evidence to point one way without giving her the proof she needs to conclude? She imagines a funeral sans a body and shutters. 

When they get back to the motel and Missy opens the door and she is alone in the room, Scully is not surprised. She is  _ shattered.  _ It’s like learning the day you’ll die, then waking up on that day and recoiling at the calendar. What will be cannot be stopped. Not by any power of persuasion.  _ Any. _

She wants to scream, cry, file a personal complaint with God. Instead, she walks through the door, thanks Eric for his help, then asks her sister what she wants for dinner. Scully’s not hungry--she rarely is these days, and how could she be at a time like this?--but Melissa, she’s human, and she’s been waiting around all day, and all they have in the room is a quarter-full bag of gummy worms, so yeah, Scully decides, Missy probably is hungry. And that’s something she can take care of. 

Missy looks at her sister like--well, like she said she just saw an alien. “Dana, you’re not well.” Then, after getting no reaction--”It’s okay to be upset.”

Scully throws her blazer over a chair. ”I didn’t say I wasn’t upset.”

Missy sits down on the bed and pats the space next to her. “Come on, let’s talk about it.”

Scully throws her hands in the air. “He’s gone, Melissa, what else can I say?” She paces through the room. “If he was in the box car, he burned to death. And if he wasn’t, then shouldn’t we have found him by now?”

“Not necessarily,” Missy counters. “Albert told me about the Anasazi, a tribe that lived here hundreds of years ago.”

“I know, I know. They disappeared, historians have no explanation for it.”

‘“That’s what they say. But, honestly, Dana--nothing disappears without a trace. Mulder included.”

Scully shoots her a look. “So what is your explanation? That he was abducted, despite there being multiple witnesses who didn’t see a thing?"

“He called you, he said he saw something in the boxcar.”

Scully nods. “Bodies...lots of them. He said they didn’t look human. And they all had smallpox vaccination scars.”

“What do you make of that?”

Scully shrugs. “I don’t know, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the Anasazi.”

“So why did the men burn the boxcar?”

“It could have been because Mulder was in there, and they wanted to kill him. Or because what’s in there was damning to them.”

Missy bites her lip. “Did the boxcar blow up?”

“No, but it’s still smoldering.”

“Could you go in tomorrow and take a look? See what you can find?”

“Missy, I doubt there’s anything left. And besides, I’ve already ignored about thirty calls from Director Skinner. I need to get back to DC...I’m lucky if I’ll still have a job.”

“Fuck the job. Think of Mulder.”

“I need to consider both if I’m actually to uncover any of the conspiracies that Mulder--and his father and so many others--died as a result of.”

Melissa frowns. Dana’s already counting her partner out...that’s hard to come back from, being christened as a corpse. She sighs. ”Alright, I’m going to preface this by saying that I truly don’t believe that Mulder’s dead, and I know you will find him.”

Scully’s eyes narrow, intrigued by her sister’s shift in tone. “Okay…”

“There’s a technique that I learned from my therapist friend,” Missy begins, already setting off alarm bells in Scully’s head, “that is meant to help process complicated feelings about a person.” 

Scully purses her lips as Missy continues--”It’s used to find clarity and--if it’s someone you’ve lost, literally or metaphorically--to give closure. I think it would help you establish a clear motivation to keep up your work on the X-Files.”

Scully’s forehead creases right between the eyebrows. “I just told you, I have one.”

“Yes, but if you go back to Washington, bureaucracy’s gonna get in the way of all of that. That’s why you drove out here in the first place, isn’t it? To avoid bureaucracy and push forward with the case?”

“I suppose,” Scully mumbles.

“And that’s exactly what Mulder would have done, and that’s what he would want you to do now.”

“This is beginning to sound like one of those ‘if x jumped off a bridge, would you?’ scenarios,” Scully retorts. 

“But with the opposite sentiment,” Melissa clarifies. “You and Mulder have never been closer to finding the truth. Now do you want to hear my suggestion or not?”

Hands on her hips, Scully’s silence commands Missy to continue. 

“Let me remind you that Mulder is not dead, and this is just an exercise.”

Scully nods, more to keep her moving than in agreement. 

“I want you to write a eulogy for him.”

Scully’s mouth drops open in protest. “And this is going to advance the investigation  _ how? _ ”

“By giving you emotional clarity. Essentially, you’ll realize how much he means to you, and it will push you to do whatever you can to complete the investigation.”

Scully scoffs. “You act like I don’t even like him or something.”

“You like him, but you’re afraid of imitating him. There’s a lack of...respect for his methods. And they’re the only way this case is gonna get solved.”

Scully crosses her arms. “Gee, apparently you should have gone to Quantico in my place.” It’s not that she’s afraid, per say, but that she doesn’t think Mulder’s unconventional approach will work. Two plus years in and she still believes herself more than him. She wishes she didn’t.

“You don’t have to read the eulogy out loud,” Missy coos, knowing full well that she’ll be sneaking around during the night to get her hands on it when her sister refuses to share. 

“Wow, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better _ , _ ” Scully groans. 

Melissa squeezes her sister’s shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay. You’ll find him, and this will help you know what to say when you do.”

Scully leans into the hug. “For the record, I think this is insane, alright? I’m only doing it because it’s getting too late to search the desert.”

“Understood.” Missy stands up. “Oh, and to answer your question, Albert invited us over for a traditional tribal feast at his house.”

“What?”

“You asked what I wanted for dinner. Those are our plans.”

“Oh.” Scully looks at her lap. It seems unfair to have to face the world at a time like this. Especially when her head is plagued with thoughts about what she would-- _will?_ \--say at her partner’s funeral. And still, she continues.

\--------------------

Crowding around Albert’s dining table, the party finishes the last bites left on their plates. It has been a long day--or days, more accurately--and the desolate black sky outside makes Scully feel like it’s 4am, though the clock only reads 7. She blinks toward her company, trying to remain present.

“I am thankful we could share this meal,” Albert says, nodding to Scully and her sister. “It is not often we get outsiders here, and even less often that we’re able to indulge in the foods of our ancestors.”

Missy reaches for the final piece of fry bread, biting into it daintily. 

“There’s not a lot here,” Albert tells them, eyes downcast. “Nowadays, we take what we can get, and that means eating to survive...your processed foods and non-perishables have become the staples of our diets.”

Scully tries not to frown. “Well, we’re very glad that you prepared this for us. It was delicious,” she says, trying to inject enthusiasm into her downtrodden heart. 

“Yes, thank you very much,” Missy affirms. 

Albert casts his eyes in Scully’s direction. A shadow falls over her. From where, she is not certain. 

“You are hurting, but you do not need to be. What is yours will find you. There is no such thing as disappearance.”

Scully pulls her lips into a solemn smile. “That’s kind of you to say.”

“It is the truth. The desert acts in its own way, and it is never wrong.”

Scully nods, trying to believe him. Trying to have faith. “Thank you, Albert.”

From across the table, he extends his palms toward her. “Pray with me.”

She clasps his hands and closes her eyes. Prayer is not normally something she engages in with others around, but neither is grief. 

Albert begins speaking in the language written on the Defense Department files. She doesn’t understand the words, but his sincerity transcends semantics. The spirit of faith--the spirit of God--is there.

She has been thinking lately of faith. The faith she has been feeling is not that of Sunday mornings and ‘forgive me Father for I have sinned.’ It’s something else entirely, something that has compelled her to do things  _ she would never do...  _ until she looked down at her hands and she was doing them. 

So many transgressions to count, and yet she hesitates to even call them that. Injured her partner--a suspected fugitive--to keep him from implicating himself, tapped her sister as her sidekick to take him halfway across the country, and deserted her duties at the FBI, all in favor of the truth. 

Maybe truth is faith that good will prevail. 

\--------------------------

When Scully sits down that night with the motel notepad and a pen, she becomes a conduit for everything she couldn’t say out loud. She copies the entire Mulder file from her brain, and it still doesn’t feel like enough. It doesn’t capture any of his essence, the unique flavor of humanity that he bravely faced the world with which made him so... _ him _ . 

It is then that Scully realizes you can know all the details of someone’s life without ever really knowing them, and that scares her because she gets the inkling that she has never truly let Mulder in--though he has opened up to her--and what if he dies feeling like he never got further than the young woman whose physics thesis he read? That’s not fair, not when she knows him so well.

She takes a breath and puts the pen down. She can’t compose Mulder to life. Resurrection doesn’t work that way. What she can do--and what she realizes is what every person does in this situation, and there must be something wrong with her because it wasn’t her first instinct--is write about how the man she knows _ (knew?)  _ made her feel.  _ About the impact his life had on her life.  _

Her vision blurs as she works to consolidate her unauthorized biography of Fox William Mulder into a passage that suggests the joy their partnership brought into her life. Though Missy said she wouldn’t have to share, Scully can’t shake the feeling that she will need this at some point in time, that having a eulogy on call might not be such a bad idea. It’s a terrible thought, but a truth every agent knows. After all, she and Mulder witnessed each other writing their wills, and that was considered a customary work duty. Nothing is out of reach.

And so she wrote as if she’ll have to read it one day, letting her emotions flow within the confines of her finely tuned self-awareness. The end product turns out somewhat more sentimental than she envisioned, but she caps her pen and walks away, giving herself permission to take up space. 

_ \--Fox William Mulder-- _

_ As he despised being called by his first name, I must take the liberty of referring to my partner as Mulder one last time. I was lucky to know him. Not as Spooky or the alien-obsessed man in the basement, but for who he truly was. Nothing was more important to Mulder than the truth. And the truest truth I know about him is that he loved his sister, and he wanted justice for her. It’s what he spent his life on, and ultimately, what he sacrificed it for. I am honored to have played any role in his mission, and I hope to continue it in his memory.  _

_ If there’s one piece of Mulder that I hope to carry with me for the rest of my life, it’s his tenacity. Mulder never, never let any obstacle get in his way. I can’t tell you how many times I wasn’t sure where he was, only to learn that he had flown to the ends of the Earth to investigate whatever lead he found promising that day. I doubt that I’ll ever encounter anyone who lives up to the passion and determination he contained within him. And it’s a shame because the world needs that...The world needed him.  _

_ I needed him too. He challenged me in ways I never dreamed of. Sometimes I wanted to pull my hair out, but mostly, I just kept thinking about how boring my life would be if I never met him. And now...I don’t know what’s next. There were so many possible futures ahead for us and the X-Files. This isn’t just a eulogy for Mulder, it’s a eulogy for all that could have been. He was my best friend. There’s nothing more I can say.  _

When she reads it back the next morning, she falls to her knees in conversation with God, pleading for a miracle to bring the man she has finally realized she loves back into her life.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully searches for Mulder in the desert; Missy encounters her own trouble back in Washington

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Blessing Way/Paper Clip adjacent

As she stands in the charred boxcar, she can’t help but fear that Mulder’s remains are scattered around her. She fears him being dead, of course, but thinking about his condition if he’s alive makes her insides swirl. She had heard coyotes howling through the night and all she could think about was what if Mulder was out there, what if their glowing eyes faced him in the dark, what if their howls drowned out his cries? She thinks of all the children on milk cartons, and their poor parents, and all the pain in the world.

Albert and his son accompanied her out to the desert while Melissa stayed back and phoned the Navajo Nation police department and New Mexico’s county police. Mulder is a wanted man in the eyes of the federal government, Scully’s sure, but she’s more concerned with whether he’s a dead man. And if the FBI knows what’s good for them, they’d be concerned too. Of course, that’s a hard argument to make when her name is probably scribbled alongside Mulder’s for aiding and abetting a fugitive. Still, the more manpower they have, the greater the chance of finding him, and that’s in everyone's best interest.

She kneels on the red-dusted bottom of the boxcar and recalls what Mulder had told her he’d found: bodies, piles of them--inhuman by his description--and smallpox vaccination scars. She hadn’t been thinking clearly the night before when she told her sister there’d be nothing left. When a body burns, the skeleton survives. Not intact, exactly, but there. Permissible as forensic evidence, capable of unfurling the secrets of the skin that once surrounded it. Crematoriums have to put bones through a grinder to turn them to ash. Scully sees neither bones nor ashes around her--what is she to make of that?

“Anything ma’am?” Eric calls down to her from where he and his father are searching the rocks.

Scully stands up. “No, nothing but sand and smoke.” 

“FBI man couldn’t have gone far,” Eric emphasizes. “I never saw him leave the boxcar.”

“Well, in that case there’d be bones or some sign of remains...I see nothing, not even what he told me he saw down here.”

Albert appears at his son’s shoulder. “What was that which he saw?”

Scully squeezes her temple. “Bodies with smallpox vaccine scars. He said they didn’t look human.”

“Ah. The disappeared.”

“No, I don’t think it was the Anasazi. I think that...it’s related to whatever caused them to disappear. I think the government knew, and they wanted in on it.”

“You see?” Albert tells her. “Nothing disappears without a trace.”

Scully turns her back to them. She’s said that exact sentence to Mulder before.. _.what if she was wrong? About all of it? _

Eric helps her out of the boxcar. Vultures whine above them.

“Is the tribal police equipped to handle a missing person case?” Scully asks Albert, shielding her eyes from the sun.

“I sure hope so, but it is not often that a non-resident goes missing on the reservation.”

“Since this deals with one of their agents, the FBI could get involved,” Scully relays, “but I fear it might disturb the community.”

Albert nods. “It would be best to leave the federal government out of this.”

“Unfortunately,” Scully says, kicking a stray rock, “my partner and I were in the midst of a sort of dereliction of our duties, so I suspect the FBI will track me down no matter how hard I resist.”

“That is unfortunate,” Albert affirms. “But we will protect you as best we can.”

“Thank you.” Scully meets his eye. It is warm, but it is not the gaze she wishes she were looking into. “I’d like to get back to my sister now,” she divulges, moving toward the truck Albert brought them in.

“We’ll go,” Albert replies, ushering Eric into the truck.

And as the tires rattle over the earth, Scully realizes  that the heart can choose to stop beating when it pleases, and my god, what a burden to bear.

\--------------------------------

Scully’s phone is ringing when she walks through the motel door. She ignores it--Skinner chewing her out is the last thing she needs right now. 

At the desk, Missy labors over a spread of tarot cards, not even acknowledging Scully’s entrance. She whispers to herself as she analyzes the selections.

“You brought those?” Scully gripes.

Missy nods, still engrossed by the arrangement. She looks up from the cards. “I suspected I would need it.”

“And what do you need it  _ for _ ?” 

“To make decisions. Specifically, to decide whether I should go back to Washington.”

Scully’s forehead wrinkles. “And what do they say?”

“It’s not definite, of course, but the cards are leaning toward yes.”

“And you needed the cards to tell you this  _ why _ ?”

Missy smiles. “Because the cards work in concordance with the universe, Dana.”

Scully turns away so her sister can’t see her roll her eyes. “Oh. Right.”

Missy slides her chair back, stands up. “I know you think it’s crazy, and I won’t try to change your mind. However,  _ I _ believe that it’s a worthwhile instrument of spiritual guidance, and I’m inclined to follow its advice.”

“By going back to Washington.”

Missy nods.

“Does that mean that I come too?” Scully asks, suddenly seeing the appeal of putting tough decisions at the mercy of a completely arbitrary system. 

Missy pushes a lock of her sister’s hair behind her ear. “Not so fast. I only asked the cards about me. They said I should go.”

Scully allows the corners of her lips to turn up slightly. Oh, to let child’s play seep into your adult life. “So you didn’t ask them about me?”

“No,” Missy says, eyes shining. “Because I already know the answer. You should stay.”

“Well, shouldn’t you check with the cards about that?”

“I can, but I know what they’ll say.”

Scully frowns now. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know the answer in my heart. It’s obvious, like what color the sky is, or should you take an umbrella when it rains. There’s no need to use the cards for that.”

Scully just stares at her sister, feeling backed into a corner. If she asks her to use the cards, that implies that she has some faith in them...but to her the answer isn’t obvious, it isn’t something she knows implicitly in her heart, and sometimes she doesn’t even take an umbrella when it rains!

Missy pats her sister’s shoulder, sensing the uncertainty. “If you want me to use the cards, I’ll use the cards. But I can tell you what the right answer is.”

Scully screws her eyes shut, opening them after a long moment. “Fine, fine, I’ll just stay. But were you able to get a hold of the police?”

Missy nods. “The reservation department doesn’t have enough resources to launch a search until tomorrow. And county police won’t get involved unless the FBI requests assistance.”

“But the FBI isn’t even involved!”

“The conclusion was that since the case involves their missing agent, they should be involved (or you know, would be if we told them), and they have superior jurisdiction over the matter. It would be considered rude if local law enforcement got involved.”

Scully bites her lip. “I’m sure there’s an APB out on us, is that not enough for them?”

Missy shrugs. “I don’t know. I only gave them Mulder’s name, and they didn’t mention anything about him being wanted.”

“Well, maybe they’ll get the memo…”

“There’s a simple solution, Dana.”

Scully raises an eyebrow, inviting her to answer.

“Tell Skinner where you are and what’s happened! Having the Bureau on this would increase the chances of finding Mulder.”

“ _ If _ the Bureau doesn’t disown us first.”

Missy shrugs. “I’m sure it’s in their best interest to locate a wanted man, and maybe even his rag-tag partner…”

“That’s kind of what the rag-tag partner is afraid of,” Scully concurs. 

“Look, you’re not gonna be able to avoid questioning him for his father’s murder,  _ but _ you have evidence that proves he didn’t do it. And then that will be done and over with, and you can move on with your lives.  _ Or _ you can continue to hide out in the middle of nowhere and further incriminate yourselves.” 

Scully lowers herself onto the bed, her face in her hands. “That’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to say before we drive across the country!”

“I wanted you to make progress on the conspiracy. You have, now it’s time to stop hiding.”

“You call what’s happened here progress?” Scully grumbles. 

“Sure. You got translations from Albert--”

“That don’t reveal much.”

“--and Mulder got a look at what was inside that boxcar.”

“What good does that do if he’s not here?”

“He will be. And this will motivate both of you to push even further.”

Scully looks at her sister with world-weary eyes. “I’m really hoping that elder sisters have some sort of psychic abilities that I don’t know about,” she sighs.

Missy pulls her lips into a smile. “We do.”

The girls hug, and Scully feels the world right itself just a bit. 

\---------------------------

As he steps out of his office, key in hand, the phone sounds. He answers without hesitation, not normal for him at such a late hour.

“Hello?” he barks into the phone.

“Director Skinner, it’s Agent Scully.”

“Agent Scully, where the hell are you?”

He hears her voice tremble with a sigh, then--”It’s a long story, and I can explain it all later, but right now I need you to know that Mulder is missing.”

“He’s on the run,” Skinner responds. “Because he killed his father.”

“No, sir, he didn’t. He came to me, and I...well, I’ll spare you the details right now, but we ended up on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, and Mulder’s disappeared.”

“Agent Scully,” Skinner booms into the phone, “Agent Mulder is a federally wanted fugitive. If you’ve known where he is all this time, you are complicit in his crimes.”

“He didn’t do it sir, I took his weapon to ballistics the morning after his father was shot. They ran a ballistic fingerprint test. The results are in our office, you can see them for yourself.” 

“Why was I not informed of this? You had contact with Agent Mulder after the shooting--when he was a suspect--and you didn’t turn him in?”

“Yes, sir,” Scully sighs. 

“You told our men you didn’t know where he was.”

“Uh-huh, and I gave them a weapon to run ballistics on, but I didn’t tell them it was Mulder’s. It was FBI issue, so I told them we should run it to confirm that a FBI weapon wasn’t used.” 

“That doesn’t clear him, Agent Scully. He could have used another gun.”

“He doesn’t own another gun.”

“His father does.”

“Then ballistics test it. It wasn’t Mr. Mulder’s weapon, I promise you. I’ve  _ seen _ the weapon, and I know who used it.”

“So you’re withholding information from the FBI as well!”

“It’s not that sir. I’d be more than happy to share it with you, but first and foremost, I need your help.”

“How can you expect me to help you when you’ve deserted your duties and committed multiple federal crimes?” he thunders.

“This is about Agent Mulder’s life, sir. As you said, he’s a wanted man. Here’s your opportunity to catch him.”

“I see you in my office before I do anything.”

“ _ Please _ , sir. I’m in New Mexico.”

“You either come to my office tomorrow morning to acknowledge your failure to carry out your duties and provide me with the whereabouts of Agent Mulder, or consider yourself stripped of your badge with a warrant out for your arrest.”

Scully’s jaw clicks, he can hear it through the phone. “Alright,” she responds curtly. And with nothing else to add, “Good night.” The line clicks.

In the desert motel room, Scully turns to her sister. “He wants to see me in his office tomorrow morning.”

“You could fly back. I’ll take the car.”

Scully bites her lip and looks out the window, but all she’s met with is darkness. “I hate this, Melissa. It’s my job, or my partner.”

Missy frowns. It’s not cold, but she lifts a blanket and drapes it around her sister’s shoulders. “And you’re thinking of dad, aren’t you?...What he would do?”

Scully nods, pulling the blanket closer to her. “I thought I knew, but now that I’m faced with the decision, I’m not sure.”

“He loved his work, but he loved his family more,” Missy muses, a smile creeping onto her lips. “That was his last wish, wasn’t it? He visited you, told you that he wanted more time with you.”

Scully averts her eyes. He had, he had. A vision of him told her that when she thought she was dying, and it turned out she was not. But what is she to do with that now? Mulder’s not family, not in that way…

As if she could hear her sister’s thoughts, Missy responds, “It’s about love, Dana, in all its forms. What is life if not the connections we make with others?”

A dam tucked away in Scully’s soul has broken open. She looks at her sister with water-logged eyes, her lips trembling. 

“I love him, Melissa. More than any…”

“I know you do.” Missy wraps her arms around her sister, rocking the two of them back and forth like a mother and her baby. “Act from that place. The world needs more of that feeling.”

Scully sniffles against her sister’s shoulder. The gears have clicked into place, finally. If this is the hill she has to die on, then so be it. 

\------------------------------------

The tide climbs the shore like the man in the sky is holding magnets, drawing it onto land faster than even the moon could dare. This is no tsunami; no sky-scraping waves, no crash and burn as water meets solid. This is a flood. Like there was an invisible barrier keeping the water in its place so well delegated on maps, and suddenly that impediment has disappeared. Water sweeps onto and over land like it's been waiting since the dawn of Earth to do so. Like it’s been held back all this time, drifting in silent slumber. It’s beautiful, really.  _ Natural.  _ But in its celebration of freedom, it unwittingly wipes out the world. 

This is the dream Scully wakes from, roused by a knock on the motel door. Through the curtains, night’s pure darkness softens to a navy blue. She rolls out of bed and pads to the door in her silk pajamas, standing on her tip-toes to peer through the peephole. Sheets rustle as Missy sits up.

“It’s Albert,” Scully whispers to her sister, who pulls on a robe and joins her at the door.

Scully unbolts the door and ushers Albert in. Chilly air slips in behind him. The desert becomes a void without the sun as its heat source. 

“I’m sorry to wake you,” he mutters. “But we’ve recovered your partner.”

Scully feels like she’s had a stun-gun taken to her spine. “What? How? Is he alive?” 

“He is not conscious, but there is breath left within him. My son was out feeding the goats and noticed buzzards circling over the desert. He rode down to see, and sure enough, FBI man’s body was tucked in a quarry.”

Scully’s voice leaps octaves. She gropes for her coat. “He needs medical attention right now--”

“Yes. We are handling it,” Albert says with the calm manner of a stately man. “We are preparing a traditional healing ceremony for him, the Blessingway. We will summon the power of our holy people to help him, but ultimately, it is his spirit that must choose to stay.”

While respectable, this is not a good enough answer for Scully. She pulls on her coat. “I need to see him. I’m a doctor, I can examine him.”

“It is not medical intervention that he needs now. He is being hydrated and will be fed when the time is right. He has no visible injuries...I believe that the desert simply wore him down, as is its way.”

“There could be internal injuries, and his vitals need to be checked…” Scully argues, the scant slice of sanity she held onto slipping away. 

“We are caring for him, I promise you. You can come and observe our rituals.”

“With all due respect, I think what Mulder needs right now is more than  _ rituals. _ ”

Missy scoffs and lays a grounding hand on her sister’s shoulder, pulling her away from Albert. “Dana, please just let them do their work.”

Scully turns on her sister. “Mulder’s dying, and you want me to leave it in the hands of the spirits?!” she snaps. 

Missy sets her lips in a line. “That is what prayer is, isn’t it?”

Scully crumbles, her world-views clashing like tectonic plates. Finally, she whimpers--“I care too much about him to leave it up to fate.”

\--------------------------

And so Melissa sets off for Washington in Scully’s sedan, while Scully herself stays cloistered in that motel room trying not to scare off a miracle. The call she expected from Skinner comes, followed by many others. All go unanswered while she waits for an answer from the universe. 

Albert invited her to look in on the Blessingway ritual, but she couldn’t do it. It would be intrusive and painful and maybe even blasphemous--she can’t tempt the fates at a time like this. Besides, looking at Mulder and not being able to help him would take her back to her med school days of staring at death through the glass. Nowadays, there are only two conditions where she’ll allow herself to face death: when she can strangle it, and when she can examine the damage left in its wake. It worries her, then, which one she’ll meet Mulder under.

Missy had gone in to see him before she left. She understood her sister’s apprehension and took the liberty of checking up on Fox herself. Albert had not lied; Mulder was unconscious, but he looked alright. No blood, no bruises, just sun-burnt skin and the aura of exhaustion. She would not have left if she didn’t believe that he would pull through and that his awakening would be a moment of reckoning for he and her sister to tackle on their own.

Four days pass before Eric greets Scully with the vague notion of a smile as he pulls up on his motorbike. She had been expecting him; he takes her over to Albert’s for lunch every day. His countenance is different today, but he is quiet like always. She snaps on the helmet he brought for her and settles herself behind him on the bike. 

The growl of the engine reminds her of Maryland forests and Bill’s four-wheeler. How she’d sit behind him and Missy would sit behind Charlie and they would race over the paths traced by hundreds of children over hundreds of years. It felt like being a part of something bigger than herself. It felt like  _ freedom. _

Now, it feels like chains. Chains she’s had put around her because she’s choosing to do the right thing. The ones keeping her hidden in the desert. The ones making her pin all her hopes on the Navajo people and their gods. The ones holding her feelings hostage from her. And the ones hiding the truth from her and the man who needs it the most. She wants to be back in the basement office with Mulder. She wants things to be okay.

It’s a short ride to Albert’s, and he is standing on the driveway to greet her when they drive up. 

“Hello Agent Scully,” he says as she swings her leg over the bike and hands her helmet to Eric. “It is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

She had been too occupied with her thoughts to notice, but yes, it is as good a day as the desert gives. Sunshine offset by a breeze, low humidity, and temperatures that do justice to spring. 

“It is, Albert,” she answers kindly. “How are you today?” She has become quite comfortable in his company. He’s been helping her scour the translated passages for useful information, though they have not come up very lucky.

“I am well,” he answers in his warm tone. “There is someone who wants to see you.”

“Oh?” Scully’s attention snaps to Albert’s house. Has Skinner tracked her down? Is he waiting inside to admonish her? There are no extra cars in the driveway, but knowing what she knows about helicopters and appearances and disappearances, this means nothing. 

“No one in there,” Albert assures, following her gaze. He lays a hand on her shoulder and guides her toward the Blessingway tent. 

Scully resists him. “I’ve told you, I feel it would be disrespectful to enter your sacred space as a non-believer.”

“You are not a non-believer just because you believe other things. You are one of the most fervent believers I have met. Besides, your partner wants to talk to you.”

Scully breaks away. “What?...He’s awake?”

“Yes, ma’am. As of dawn.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who reverses course as quickly as Scully does about the tent. She rushes toward it, Albert following after. “Is the ceremony over then?” 

“No, it is up to FBI man to end it properly. He may not work, change clothes, or bathe for four days.”

Scully groans, then takes hold of the tent entrance flap. “I can go in…?” she queries, still uncertain despite days worth of invitations. 

Albert nods. “Go on. I will stay here, and you can ask the boys to join me.”

Scully pulls the material aside and enters. She’s met with the same excitement one feels when stepping onto a train car or off of a plane. She is arriving somewhere only her imagination could previously touch. 

At the far side of the tent, a cluster of Navajo boys about Eric’s age char a piece of bread over the fire. Completing their circle, with his back to her, her partner sits with a blanket pulled around his shoulders. His hair brushes the nape of his neck, and the curve of his biceps look less defined than she’s ever seen them. Yet undeniably, it is him.

“Mulder.” Hellos have never been necessary for them.

He’s heard so many voices talk to him over the past few days that he assumes this is one hanging behind. Only when he sees the boys stop their conversation and draw their attention toward the entrance does he turn and realize this is not  _ a  _ voice, but  _ the  _ voice.

He rises to his feet far quicker than has to be healthy and stumbles toward his partner. “I didn’t know if you had stayed or not. When Albert told me you were here…” Words can’t capture the feeling. Scully understands.

“I couldn’t leave you behind,” she says, deciding to gloss over the details of her dilemma. “Melissa took the car back, but yeah, I’m here.”

She lays a hand against one of the diminished biceps and walks him over to the pillows that have been laid out for sitting. She helps him down in a delicate fashion, then takes a place next to him. The Navajo boys exit without being asked.

“I didn’t think I would see you again,” Mulder confesses, his voice straining as it gains back its strength. 

“Were you planning to join the Navajo?” Scully wisecracks, taking over his usual duty. 

“No, I…” he chuckles at himself. “I don’t know. I just thought I’d wake up and it would be like Freaky Friday, like I’m in someone else’s body, someone else’s life.”

“In Freaky Friday, the mom and daughter switched bodies. They knew each other. So it would be like if we switched bodies, and I think we’d figure out a way to switch back, don’t you?”

Mulder cracks a smile. “On second thought, no take backsies!”

Scully rolls her eyes. She hasn’t done that, she realizes, in about five days.  _ What an influence he has on her. _

“Are you feeling okay?” she asks, threading a hand beneath the blanket so she can lay a hand over his. 

“You ever asked the bodies on your autopsy table that? I think they’d have a comparable answer.”

“Is there anything I can get you?” Her voice is a rush of tenderness. “Water?...Have they fed you?”

Mulder rubs his eyes. “I’ve been fed, watered, and bathed like any respectable man brought back from the dead. I apparently have four days of lazing around ahead of me.”

“Yeah, I heard. Not very convenient for a wanted felon.”

“Damn, I was hoping I dreamed that part.”

“No, unfortunately not,” Scully sighs out. “And I’ve been ignoring Skinner’s orders, so I’ll be lucky to still have a badge.”

“So we’re the Bonnie and Clyde of the FBI now, ey?”

Scully smiles. “I think we’ve  _ always _ been the Bonnie and Clyde of the FBI, though now we’re just...Bonnie and Clyde.”

“So fugitives without the employment of the federal government to protect them…”

“Yeah.”

“ _ Great.”  _ He pulls the blanket tighter against him. Then--“So do you have any idea how I got here?”

“Which part are you fuzzy on? New Mexico, this tent, life in general…” She is so relieved to have him back that she’ll indulge in a bit of playful banter.

“Um…” through his bleariness, he is still able to smile at her silliness. “I remember our car ride out here. I’m not really sure how I ended up the guest of honor at a Blessingway ritual.”

“Do you remember being in the boxcar? You called me and told me there were bodies with smallpox vaccination scars.”

“And that they didn’t look human…”

Of course he remembers that above all. 

“Right, how could I forget?” Scully teases.

“And then I remember heat--really searing heat--and a long period of nothing, and then crawling into the rocks and hearing coyotes cry as I closed my eyes. And then I found myself here.”

“The boxcar went up in flames. CSM’s work, I believe.” She rakes her nails against his blanket. “I don’t know how you escaped without any burns.”

Mulder shakes his head. “I don’t remember.” He looks up at her. “Did you think I was dead?”

She bites her lip, thinking of the hours she spent on the imaginary-that-she-worried-wouldn’t-be-so-imaginary eulogy Melissa made her write.

“I was afraid of that, yeah,” she answers tautly. She considers...should she tell him of the heartache she poured out on paper because she had nowhere else to put it? It seems so futile now with him there in front of her, his heart beating blissfully. 

She knits her brows together. “I had to think about what I would say at your funeral, so I would really appreciate if you could not scare me like that again.”

“I’ve seen your gravestone, Scully. I think we’re even.”

She contorts her face so as not to show her frown. “Maybe.” She rises, offering him her hand. “You wanna go back to the motel? Sleep in a bed for a change?”

He links his fingers through hers, and she hoists him up. “You’re still paying for that second room?” he jests, only half-joking.

She makes her way toward the tent entrance, looking back at him with a mischievous smile. “No, but Missy’s gone, so you can have her bed.”

Mulder snickers. “Cheapskate.”

Scully gets her revenge by letting the tent flap fall back on him as she goes through, and he laughs because yeah, that sounds about right. He has definitely woken up in the right life.

\-----------------------------------

She’s just stepped out of the shower when she hears it: the faint clash of a rubber sole against hardwood. It shouldn't be; her sister is 2,000 miles away, her lover even more than that. She is to be alone...but she’s not. 

And it scares her, but it doesn’t. She knows what to do--she’s read about this, thought about it, almost lived it dozens of times. It comes with the territory.  _ A young woman, a conventionally attractive young woman, a young woman who walks hand-in-hand with her girlfriend in public... _ yes, she has been waiting for this like winter waits for the first snow. She was born with the knowledge of this fate in her bones.

And so she slides on her t-shirt and shorts, grabs the phone from the nightstand, and wordlessly locks the bedroom door. Seeking as much cover as she can get, Missy slips into her closet, her hair still bundled in a towel. If she could get to her purse, she could grab her mace, but it’s in the kitchen and that’s too much of a risk. 

She won’t cower defenseless though, for she will not allow herself to become another name in the paper, a number on the page. She raises onto her tip-toes and grabs an old lamp from the top shelf. Sliding off the lampshade reveals some nice sharp carvings that’ll surely do some damage. 

She presses herself against the slats of the accordion door and listens. Could she have been hearing things? She didn’t hear anyone break in, but the shower was running. Now she hears nothing more than the usual creaking of the walls. Still, she could have sworn there were footsteps, and that’s happened here before, so how could she rule it out?

She thinks of her sister, alone, running a bath to relax after another day on her new job and ending up laid out on her bathroom tile. Put on display like a mannequin in a store window. It sickens her. That was just the first time her sister became a board for bad men’s depraved darts.  _ How do you end a violent cycle without further violence? _

Murmurs--too loud for their speaker’s own good--confirm Missy’s suspicions. So it is not one pair of footsteps, but two, that stalks her. They come from the other side of the door, though not too much beyond it. She dials the three digits that can save her and squeezes the phone between her ear and shoulder.

As fate wills it, so it shall be.

\-------------------------

Scully can’t take her eyes off him, and she’s not sure whether it’s the motherly instinct or its perfect opposite. He’s lounging on the adjacent bed in his undershirt and jeans, chewing leftover Spitz while absorbing some public broadcasting documentary about the Trail of Tears. His eyes prowl the screen, and Scully wonders if he always watches television like this: hungry desperation meets boyish wonder. It is charming, and it is sad. She wishes she knew him when he was growing up, and that he knew her too.

The documentary breaks for a word from its sponsors, and Mulder rolls onto his side, the front of him facing his partner.

Scully gives him an acknowledging smile. “Are you comfortable?”

He nods. “These are better accommodations than the Bureau would stick us in, that’s for sure.”

Scully smiles at her cross-legged lap. She doesn’t think so really, it’s the second cheapest she could find and all the drinking glasses have lipstick stains, but it’s a nice idea. And he’s spent days against the Earth floor, so she won’t challenge him.

She runs her eyes over him, thinking of the days and nights she passed staring at that bed’s emptiness. Forget the fear of losing her job, even the fear of arrest--none of that matters because he is back now, and that is all she could ask. 

With a stretch, she pulls open her bedside drawer and takes out a notepad.  _ The _ notepad. Just like that, she is a teenager taking a plastic key and unlocking her diary.

Mulder tosses a sunflower seed in the air, but it thuds on his chest instead of landing in his mouth. Scully pretends she didn’t see.

“When I said that I had to think about what I’d say at your funeral, I mean I thought about it a lot...I wrote it down even,” she stammers. Now she is a teenage boy asking his crush to the prom with a handmade sign and a balloon, and god does it feel inadequate. 

Mulder’s face lights up. “Lemme see!” He sticks his arm across the way, flexing his hand like he’s begging for a cookie. 

Scully clutches the paper close to her side. “It’s stupid and sentimental,” she insists. 

“As opposed to the crushing takedown you were hoping to deliver?”

She shrugs. “It just doesn’t do you or your life justice, and that’s all the more clear with you right in front of me.”

“C’mon, Scully. I’m not asking you to create world peace--I just wanna know what you said.”

She scans her sprawling writing, her beating heart in ink. “I mean...it’s nothing you don’t already know.”

He leans forward on the bed, closing the distance between his hand and the paper. “Let me see it.”

Scully lets it slide from her fingers with a huff of apprehension. Indifference has always been her go-to defense mechanism, but there’s nothing about Fox W. Mulder she can be indifferent about. If he doesn’t already realize that, he will in a moment.

His eyes trace her sentences with a curiosity that is quenched by every word. He smiles up at her, and it’s the youngest she’s ever seen him.

“ _ Best friend _ ?” He can’t even make it through his teasing with a straight face, chuckling before he gets a chance to continue. “Scully, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Thank god we got that out in the open,” Scully hums, riding his playful wavelength. 

“No doubt.” Mulder caresses the paper between his fingers, absorbing all the care she put into it while she thought he was gone. “Well, at least you won’t have to read that anytime soon.”

Scully nods, a bashful smile adorning her face. “At least.” Her lips part decisively, but she closes her mouth, a self-imposed censure.

Mulder takes a stray look at the TV screen, the documentary having come back on. Quickly, his eyes fall back on Scully; she shines brighter than the television light.

“For what it’s worth,” he stammers, “I’m glad I didn’t die...that I get to be here with you.”

Scully’s eyebrows crease. That’s the most moving thing a living person has ever said to her...it’s as if she’s taken a bird with a broken wing into her palm, a display of trust so tender it renews her faith in existence. 

She turns her face away from him. He’s left with a view of her profile--a dainty white cheek and the curve of her nose--and he’s never understood the urge to break out a sketchbook until now. This is a sight crafted for capture. 

“Mulder, that’s... _ thank you, _ ” she spills out. If she looked at him now, she’d do the thing she fears would ruin them forever. So she doesn’t. She closes her eyes and tilts her head toward the popcorn ceiling with something like a prayer in mind. It’s God’s hand, she knows it must be, when the phone rings at just that second.

She lifts it off the bedside table without opening her eyes. “Hello?”

“Dana?” 

Her sister’s voice floats through the receiver, sounding as close as it ever does. Scully sits up, turns toward the table’s edge as if her sister were in the room. “I’m here. Is everything okay?” She asks this because she’s used to it being the first thing she’s asked.

“Well…” A pang leaps in Scully’s heart. Her sister is not one to know uncertainty. She lays the receiver on the table and hits the speaker button. 

“There was a break-in.” Missy’s voice fills the room, catching Mulder’s attention too. He mutes the TV. “I’m okay, I wasn’t hurt, and I didn’t encounter the burglars directly. I hid in the closet and called the police--I don’t think they even knew I was home. They were gone by the time the authorities arrived. They dug around in your room.”

“My room?” Scully’s heart beats in double-time. “Did they take anything?”

“Not that I can tell.” Missy exhales. “They were looking for you, I think.”

Mulder leans forward, and Scully swaps a pin-prick glance with him. “Are the police still there?” she asks.

“Yes, they’re swabbing for fingerprints and shoe-prints.”

“Can I talk to them?”

“Yeah--I’ll give you someone better.” Before Scully can question what that means, she hears the receiver switch hands and a familiar voice boom toward her. “Agent Scully, we’re reviewing your complex’s security cameras to see what we can get.”

“Skinner?” Scully remarks, as if his voice is one she might fail to recognize. Mulder chuckles, and she wishes he didn’t. 

“Are you alone?” Skinner asks, probably tipped off by her partner’s lack of finesse. 

“No, Mulder is here,” she replies nonchalantly. 

There’s an indiscriminate grumble on Skinner’s part, then he continues--”Well, this appears to be a targeted attack. As far as we can tell, all of the apartment is untouched but your bedroom and bathroom. Drawers were left open in both areas.”

“And this wasn’t law enforcement serving an arrest warrant or anything?”

“No, that situation has been resolved.”

Scully’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean…?”

“I found the ballistics report for Agent Mulder’s weapon in your office, and after speaking with your sister, mother, and Albert Holsteen, any charges have been dropped. For both of you.”

Scully’s mouth falls open. She and Mulder lock eyes. Stress he didn’t even know he had falls away.

“Now, there will still be internal discipline by the Bureau, but that’s not the subject of this call. We believe that whoever is responsible for killing Mulder’s father is the same person who broke into your apartment.”

“ _ Krycek,” _ Scully and Mulder both choke out.

“Alex?” Skinner scoffs. “I’ll need the details on that, and I’ll need to hear them from you.  _ In my office. _ ”

“Yes, sir,” Scully exudes. 

Finally, she and Mulder are homebound. 

\-------------------

They are a sight to see as they crawl through airport security, Mulder in week old clothes and Scully lugging their suitcases just in case that might count as “work.” Mulder passes through the metal detector first, coming up clean despite the tangy stench he is taking on. 

Scully takes her gun out of the holster and presents it to the security guard in one hand, her badge in the other. “I’m a federal agent. This is my FBI-issued weapon.” 

“Alright, leave it here and we’ll slide it through.”

She does so, then slips under the metal detector herself. It whines in protest, and she’s surrounded before she can even process the sound.

Her hand goes to her cross. “Is it the necklace?” It doesn’t usually set off the detectors, but maybe this one is more sensitive. She takes it off and tries again. Again, the machine beeps.

“We’re going to need to pat you down, ma’am,” the guard informs her. She pushes away the fear that flashes in her core, then spreads her arms and legs. Hands--men’s hands, brawny and uncompromising--inundate her. She closes her eyes and pretends it isn’t happening, and god, she wishes Mulder weren’t standing only a few feet away.

After a minute that feels all too indulgent, the men back away. “I’m not finding anything,” one says to another, like Scully isn’t even there. 

“Let’s see the x-ray again,” another says, limping off with the other while one stays positioned in front of Scully. 

“Neck…” she hears them say. “I’m thinking it was just the necklace.” 

The men return, and one moves her hair aside to examine the base of her neck. Nothing shows. “You got a bomb in there we should be worried about?” he jokes. 

“I sure hope not,” Scully huffs, getting testy. 

“Well, here’s your necklace, and your gun. You’re good to go.”

She takes her items with the feeling that she is nothing but a toy to them. They work at a candy shop, but only every once in a while do they get to taste the candy. She hopes she left a sour taste in their mouths, though she doubts that. 

Joining Mulder, she feels a sense of cleanliness, a rebirth of a sort. How do his hands touch a woman, she wonders? She’s been privy to his gentle touches and reassuring swoons, so she knows he’s not greedy, but... would he be? If she asked him to? 

A woman can only wait so long.


	17. Chapter 17 [i think it's too late to start fancy titles haha :/]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully meets the Mufon women, who clue her into their shared fate; Mulder accompanies Scully to the OB-GYN after her car breaks down; A mysterious voicemail appears on Scully's machine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Features references to season 3, ep 9, Nisei

The murder of Mulder’s father--and attempted murders of the agents themselves--went the way of many X-Files, becoming another everlasting thorn in their sides. Skinner wasn’t happy with them, but he pitied them, so it was a two-week paper pusher assignment and then they were back at it. Lightning strikes, allusions to immortality from a mortal man, too many prisons and too much death; the calendar advanced, time marched on, and they saw it all but it couldn’t touch them.  _ Wouldn’t _ , more like. Emotionally stunted, that’s what they are. Holding onto too much pain to process any. 

And then comes Mulder’s $29.95 tape and its path to Allentown; a Japanese diplomat, a dead man, and a list of Mufon members wait in its wake. All of which lead Scully to Betsy Hagopian’s doorstep. 

These women--whom she has never seen before, nor could not pick from any crowd--know her. They swear. She is  _ one of them _ , they say, as if that’s supposed to snap everything into perspective. As if the semblance of belonging somewhere will make her spill her guts. But no; she wants to be nothing but herself, and sometimes not even that. 

Then there are dozens of cars outside and women surround her, speaking of a place she didn’t know she knew until they said it. A blank slate flashes in her mind; an echo from some past life. She doesn’t believe in reincarnation, so how can that be?

Then the women--these strange women--speak of men & mysterious tests, and a drill sears Scully’s brain, and she’s coming apart, and is this annihilation or healing? 

These images--she can hardly call them memories--expand until she’s living inside them. She is doubled, the victim and the spectator. She sees herself on a medical table, a tube spiraling from her belly button. It’s nonsensical, there’s no procedure of the sort. And then, before her unblinking eyes, her stomach grows.  _ Inflated like a balloon.  _ Her warped form...it looks pregnant, and her old fear comes back as a bitter taste in her mouth. Surely this is something seen in a dream, impossible to be reflected in any reality. 

The rattle of metal pulls her back to the present. Every woman standing before her holds a capsule containing a microchip, barely perceptible to the eye.  _ Marked... _ they have been marked. She has too, they say. They have all the scar, and it’s already been established that she is one of them. 

Scully’s swept up by the crowd and taken to Betsy Hagopian at Allentown Medical Center. She’s unsure at this point whether she’s investigating the murder case or some vastly larger conspiracy. Or if those are even distinguishable. 

She watches as the nurse slides Betsy into the MRI machine, wonders how Betsy feels about them being there as she disappears from view. Scully once thought of making oncology her specialty, back when she was bright-eyed and believed she could save the world. That path would have been paved with pain, sure, but there would be victory, and above all, hope. Her current job fails to put her in such close contact with miracles. 

_ We’re all dying because of what they do to us _ , Penny Northern says. And how ironic it is, Scully thinks. She and Mulder want the truth--the proof--of some atrocity greater than themselves, and they may have it...once she’s packed into a coffin. How’s that saying go?  _ Be careful what you wish for… _

\------------------------

The scar at the base of her neck had never stood out to Scully. She can’t see it, and her hair covers it anyway. She had felt it in the shower once, shortly after her return, but she wrote it off as a bug bite. No one had ever commented on it until Penny Northern and the Mufon women; not Missy, not Mulder, not her mother…

Missy had noticed it during one of their face-mask nights in the weeks after the return, but she chose not to say anything, figuring it wasn’t worth adding to her sister’s worry. If she had seen it again recently--known that it hadn’t gone away--she would have said something.

Mulder...well, he never noticed it, and holy shit, he would have given anything for a situation where he could have. Scully never wears her hair up, he’ll blame it on that though it's fruitless. Really, it’s on him. He has a mental map of the places he’s touched her--and the places he won’t. Her neck is on neither one. He hasn’t gotten there yet. 

Margaret Scully never saw it, and frankly, she would have thought it was something inappropriate to mention and wished her daughter had worn a turtleneck that day. What else can be said about that?

Thus, as autumn breaks over Washington, the agents crowd into a Bureau lab with Pendrell (or Agent Nerd, as Mulder prefers to call him) to address the intruder put into Scully’s body. Scully’s calm, cool, and collected, but Mulder winces as Pendrell’s tweezers pierce her skin. He’s never had the guts (nor the patience) for the medical profession.

“Yep, I’ve got something,” Pendrell remarks, dropping it into a petri dish. Mulder inches closer to get a good look at the object, and sure enough, it’s a microchip. He’s met with the urge to pocket it and run so that his partner would never have to see it.

Instead, Pendrell presents the dish to Scully. “It looks like a computer chip to me,” he tells her. “Something manufactured.”

Scully squeezes the object between her thumb and forefinger. She looks to Mulder. “This must be what made the metal detector go off in Santa Fe.”

He clears his throat. “Yeah, I remember.” The handsy men at airport security still make his blood boil.

As Scully’s eyes meet Pendrell’s, he feels like he’s staring directly into a spotlight. And he’s not used to having the spotlight on him. “So it’s man-made, you believe?” she asks, as in need of an answer from him as she ever will be.

He blushes. “Well, I don’t know of manufacturing plants on any other planet, but it does look pretty technologically advanced.” He takes the dish over to a microscope and peers through. “I can’t say I’ve seen something of this complexity before.”

Pendrell moves aside so Scully can take a look. She’s not accustomed to using this sort of magnification for anything other than microbes, but the intricacy of the wiring speaks for itself. Loops upon loops upon loops of electric current, all contained in a space smaller than a pea.

She looks up. “It’s like it was storing something…” The idea of her thoughts being catalogued by some malevolent stranger is too terrifying to voice. Both men’s mind’s land on it without any prompting.

Mulder lays a hand on the small of her back and steers her away from the microscope. “We’ll get this all taken care of, okay?” he murmurs. “Pendrell will pinpoint the manufacturer, then we can track them down and help Betsy Hagopian and all those women.” He intentionally leaves out mention of Scully herself. She hates being helpless, he won’t frame her as such.

“Okay,” she squeaks out, and Mulder feels her shiver beneath her buttoned blazer. 

Having received his command from Agent Mulder, Pendrell watches him usher Agent Scully out of the lab with complete control over the situation. It’s as if Agent Mulder knows what he’s doing, comforting Agent Scully with such composure. And right in front of Pendrell, too! Pendrell kicks himself for...well, being himself.

\-------------------------

At ten to four, Scully grabs her purse and unclips her key ring as quietly as possible. Mulder’s in the midst of typing up a report about the Japanese diplomat who sold him the $29.95 tape, and she’d hate to ruin his flow. How alarmed Skinner would be if a Fox Mulder field report didn’t read like a Whitman poem! He’d probably assume the bounty hunter got to his agent.

She straightens her blazer and swings the purse over her shoulder. No need for a coat yet, her usual work attire combats the mid-October chill just fine. As she edges toward the door, the guilt of leaving Mulder without a goodbye stops her in her tracks. He knows about her appointment--knows she has to leave early--but still...it feels wrong to walk out without a word.

Hand against the doorframe, Scully tosses her hair over her shoulder. Her partner types at his desk with the ferocity of a teenage boy playing a video game. He even looks like one, with those wiry glasses. She can’t help but smile...these are the ordinary moments she will miss one day. 

Setting her lips in a line, she pipes up--”I’ve gotta go, Mulder. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He’s instantly snapped from his trance. “Whoa whoa whoa.” He lays his glasses beside the computer, rubs the red mark on his nose. “Let me walk you down.”

“That’s not necessary,” Scully assures, one kitten heel out the door. “I can navigate the parking garage on my own.”

Mulder pops up from his chair, rounds his desk. “Well, the parking garage,  _ yeah. _ But haven’t you heard that the Hoover Building is unaccustomed to beautiful women roaming its halls? Who knows what might happen if I send you up there by yourself.”

Scully gives him the unamused smirk he’s fishing for, tries to ignore the way his sleeves cuff over his elbow. “I only have to go through the lobby. I think I can hold any admirers off for those twenty steps.”

“You’re right, I should have faith in you.” He ruffles a hand through his hair. “At least let me escort you to the elevator.”

“If you must.” Scully turns sideways.

He slides past her, winking as he does. It’s infuriating, really, how smooth he can be when he wants to.

Scully follows him down the hallway, wondering if she’s finally grown into the giddy teenager her mother feared she would be. He hits the up button for her, then clasps his hands together--the only time he’s ever been the epitome of patience. 

“I hate to pull you away from your next masterpiece for Skinner,” Scully teases, trying to break his gentlemanly bit.

“Oh, an artist knows no timetable,” he responds, barely taking his eyes off the elevator door. He taps his foot...they always joke that the FBI takes an elevator tax out of their paychecks for making it go all the way to the basement. 

Scully looks at the floor. A moment ago, she felt like the object of Mulder’s affections. Now, she’s shut out again.

At the sound of the doors gliding open, she steps in. No need to wait for passengers to disembark; nobody comes down here. She hits the first floor button, offers Mulder a weak smile. “See you--”

He sticks his hand out as the doors begin to close and ducks into the space, taking his place beside her. She should have known...his goofy grin confirms that he’s been planning this all along. They begin their brief ascent to the next floor. 

“You know, I’m having deja vu, but I’m gonna say this anyway,” Scully starts. “You’re crazy, Mulder.”

“And I’m sure I’ve said this before Scully, but it wouldn’t hurt to hear it again--thank you,” he replies. 

Scully rolls her eyes, but god, this is much more fun than being alone. The elevator banks on the landing, and she looks to her partner as the doors open onto the lobby. “Did you lose your faith in me, or did you never have it in the first place?” she asks, taking extra long strides to keep up with him as they make their way toward the parking garage. 

“What, about the whole holding off your admirers thing?”

Scully nods. 

“I figured back-up wouldn’t hurt.” He slips his hands in his pockets, giving himself an air of pretension. As Scully watches him, she gets the notion that it’s all carefully calculated. It makes her feel both powerful and annoyed. She is the damsel, and he is framing himself as prince charming, though she is not in distress.

They make it to the parking garage and take another elevator up to Scully’s level. “Skinner’s gonna want that report before you leave tonight, you know,” Scully tells him, surprised that he has followed this far.

“I’ll burn the midnight oil if I have to,” he replies casually. And she can’t argue with that, cause she knows he will. 

While he looks for her car, she takes a long glance at his face. He spies her sedan, and they set off in that direction. 

“You don’t have to baby me,” she reminds him, almost apologetic. “I made it through med school and Quantico. If anyone is capable of--”

“It’s not about whether you’re capable, Scully. You are. But you should never have had to go through all that in the first place. It’s not fair, what you’ve dealt with.”

“Life’s not--”

“--fair. Yeah, I know, that’s why I don’t believe in God,” Mulder deadpans. 

Scully gives him the infamous look. He shrugs. “It’s the truth!”

They make it to her car, and Scully lays a hand on the driver’s door. “Alright, Mulder. It looks like we’ve both learned something about each other. Very productive conversation.” 

“Good thing I came all the way down here, huh.” He flashes a smile that would disarm a scorpion. Scully feels it in her core. She tightens her grip on the door, pulling it open. 

“Bye, Mulder,” she prods, sliding into the driver’s seat.

He salutes her. “Bye-bye.”

He stays at the front of her parking spot as she cranks--or rather, tries to crank--her car. The engine gurgles at her in protest. One twist, two twists, three twists,  _ nothing. _ She pulls the key out of the ignition and opens the door.

“It won’t start...battery’s dead, I think.”

Mulder leans against her door. “Let me try.” 

Scully shuffles herself into the passenger’s seat and he settles in, finding himself squished against the steering wheel with her seat settings. He laughs and jams the key into place. The engine won’t give under his hand either. 

He rests his elbow on the console and stares at his partner. Her eyes darken. “I don’t have jumper cables, do you?”

“I’m not a jumper cable man, no,” he mutters.

Scully knocks her head against the back of her seat, covers her face with her hands. “My appointment’s at 4:30. I got the latest one of the day…” 

“Okay, okay, no problem.” Mulder taps her shoulder. “I’ll take you.”

She uncovers her face. “But what about the report…?”

“You really think Skinner’s gonna be surprised by another late report?”

She bites her lip. “Fine, fine. It’s off 6th Street, I’ll tell you how to get there.”

“And we can pick up jumper cables on the way back,” Mulder adds. 

“Perfect.”

They hop out of the car and head for Mulder’s. Scully watches him out of the corner of her eye--he’s striding along, completely unbothered by this inconvenience. She is struck with the notion that he is a better person than her in some crucial ways.

“Do you have your keys?” she pipes up, always bringing reality into the picture.

He taps his pocket. “Right here.”

“You’re saving my ass, Mulder--thank you.”

“I was the ass hero of Oxford. I’m glad to be of service.”

Scully shakes her head, her smile eclipsing a laugh. “Please don’t ever tell me the story behind  _ that, _ ” she giggles.

“Your loss.” 

And as she looks over at him in the dingy parking garage, she knows that this is exactly where she’s meant to be.

\------------------------------

He wasn’t planning to go in with her--he expected that she’d make a fuss about it if he asked, and it wasn’t his business anyway. He’s surprised, then, when he pulls into a spot at the clinic and she raises an eyebrow when he doesn't turn the engine off. 

“Are you coming?” she asks, one leg sticking out of the car.

“Y-you want me to go with you?” he stutters. 

Scully shrinks back. “Were you planning on going back to the office? I’m not sure how long the appointment will take, but I hate to make you drive all over the place.”

“No, I was just gonna chill in here. I thought you wouldn’t want me…”

“Oh.” Scully’s out of the car now, her purse swung over her shoulder. “Well, it’s just an ultrasound, so you can come if you want. I bet you’ve never been to an OB-GYN before…”

Mulder shakes his head. “Never had the pleasure. You know I’m all for new experiences, though.”

“Come on, then.” She slams the door closed and starts walking toward the building, playing hard to get in her own little way.

Mulder cuts the engine, locks up the car, and jogs after her. Not a usual occurrence, but he likes the role-reversal. 

“So is there anything I should know,” he pants as he catches up with her, “before I walk in? Is there some kind of universal girl code that governs these places?”

“The only naked women you’re about to see are in anatomical diagrams, if that’s what you’re referring to.”

“Oh, so it’s not a communal kinda thing?”

“Jesus, Mulder. That’s a male fantasy if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Hey, men have urinals and locker rooms, it’s only fair that women have some arena for comparison too,” he attests. 

Continuing the role-reversal, Scully holds the door for him. “Clearly, we have different priorities,” she says as he strides through. He chuckles at her as he enters, feeling no insecurity about standing out. He’s not the lone man in the waiting room, but he is the only one without a visibly pregnant wife. 

He looks around while Scully checks in. The room, he feels, is misleadingly similar to any other doctor’s office. Daytime housewife fodder on TV, issues of magazines that are barely from this decade, and posters preaching about the flu shot...some unsuspecting man might walk in here because he stubbed his toe and walk out with images in his brain that’ll haunt him for the rest of his life.

He takes a seat at the far edge of the room, Scully joining him a moment later with a clipboard.

He points at the entry to the back--“I feel like they should have a sign on that door that says ‘beware: health class flashbacks ahead. And not the good ones.’”

“If you’re a woman, it’s no flashback,” she tells him, focused on filling out the forms. “It’s just what you deal with everyday.”

“Okay, but imagine men had to go to a place like this, and  _ you _ had to go back there.”

She looks up. “Mulder, you know I do autopsies on dead bodies, right?” Then, with a smirk--”Besides, I’ve never known you to be squeamish about naked women.”

“Right, but this is like...I’m used to looking at the completed painting, and now I’m seeing the paint-by-number. Not so pretty.”

“Maybe you  _ should _ go sit in the car…” Scully says with a hint of a tease. 

“I digress.” He glances absentmindedly at what she’s writing, then looks away. 

Scully notices and meets his eye. “You know what I’m here for, right?”

Without intending to, he read it off her paper. “Follicle ultrasound?”

“Yes, but do you know  _ why? _ ”

Mulder holds his mouth open like he’ll catch an answer that way. “Uh…” he starts, classic caught-off guard college student. 

Scully jots the last marks on her forms. “To check my egg reserve and see if anything’s changed since the last time. To see if there’s any possibility of me having a biological child, essentially.”

“Huh,” Mulder hums dumbly.  _ Way to make an asshole of himself, cracking jokes at a time like this. _ He wishes it were socially acceptable to walk around with tape over your mouth. 

“I’m sorry, Scully. I didn’t realize the situation was so dire.”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

It’s funny she says that, because at that exact moment Mulder is thinking about how it  _ is _ his fault, and where’s the nearest bridge? He realizes then, too, that maybe she wants him there so she’s not alone for whatever the results say, and boy, this is more than he bargained for when he offered to drive her.

He turns to her, his glance far shyer than usual. “So this is the follow-up to your first ultrasound?”

Scully nods. “It’s been almost a year.”

“But you…” he tries to arrange the words in as courteous a manner as possible. “Are you still premenopausal?”

Scully crosses one leg over the other. She’s pleasantly surprised that he cares about this. “No, I’m on birth control to regulate my cycles. But that doesn’t matter if I don’t have enough eggs left for potential fertilization. Fertility and menstruation are not necessarily linked.”

“But there’s an upside to that, right? Aren’t there health risks with early menopause?”

“Yep.” 

Mulder’s not sure whether she’s answering his first question or his second one. He lets it be, and good thing, because a nurse calls Scully’s name moments later. He follows her into the back like an eager to please puppy, playing it cool until the nurse pipes up.

“Mr. & Mrs. Scully, how are you?”

“ _ Not married _ ,” Scully clarifies, amused. 

“Oh,” the nurse takes a stray glance at her clipboard. “I’m sorry.” She gestures toward Mulder. “You are…?”

“Fox Mulder. I’m her partner.”

“Oh, okay. I see. Gender-neutral language, very inclusive.”

“He’s my  _ FBI _ partner,” Scully grumbles, giving Mulder a punch in the bicep for his purposeful vagueness. “I work at the Bureau.”

“Ah. Makes sense.” The nurse waves them into an exam room then closes the door behind herself. As she reads over Scully’s chart, Mulder’s presence makes less and less sense to her, and she addresses her patient with pitched confusion in her voice.

“So you are here for a follow-up antral follicle count...?”

“Yes ma’am.”

The nurse reads from the chart. “Your first one was roughly eleven months ago and indicated low fertility. Five follicles were counted.”

Scully nods.

“But since then, you’ve started hormonal birth control and now have stable menstrual cycles, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.” The nurse makes note of this, then looks to Scully. “If you could come with me for a moment, we’re gonna get your weight, and then Dr. Zapolsky will be right in for the ultrasound.”

Alone in the strange room, Mulder’s met with fascination, not fear. He’s never seen an exam chair with stirrups in real life, and it makes him chuckle, reminiscent of birth scenes in slapstick comedies. On the counter is a 3D model of the uterus, which is pretty cool if he’s being honest. Remove the labels and it’s a modern art piece...and he means that with all due respect. His reproductive system would not make a nice decoration, that’s for sure. 

He’s reading a poster about each trimester of pregnancy when Scully and the nurse come back in.  _ Did you know that babies can be frightened by loud noises while they’re still in the womb? _ he wants to ask, but Scully knows everything, so she probably already knows that.

Scully settles into the exam chair as best she can. She locks eyes with Mulder, and he winks at her--again. It puts a genuine smile on her face, which has never happened in this room. The nurse exits quietly, but they are still there, and so is the smile.

They don’t speak at first. Silence is good when it’s comfortable, they have learned, and it’s always comfortable for them. Until Mulder begins to worry that Scully’s head might be spinning with dark thoughts, and he can’t have that. He thumbs toward the poster. “Did you know that loud noises can frighten babies through the womb?” 

Scully’s gaze falls upon him, warm and light. “I’ve always thought that was just an old wife’s tale. I never saw it demonstrated during my obstetrics rotation.”

“Well, it’s on the poster. It’s gotta be true,” he wisecracks.

The door opens, and the majestic Dr. Zapolsky saunters in. 

“Let’s ask Dr. Zapolsky,” Scully suggests.

“What’s that?” The doctor rolls the ultrasound machine to the center of the room. 

“We were wondering if it’s true that babies in the womb can spook at loud noises,” Scully explains.

“It’s on the poster,” Mulder adds.

“Oh! Yes! But not until around 28 weeks.” Dr. Zapolsky sits down on her stool. “You never saw that during your rotations?”

Scully shakes her head. 

“It presents as a kick, and as long as the exposure to the noise is not continuous, it’s harmless.”

“Good to know...I guess,” Scully finishes, wondering why Mulder fixated on that of all things.

Dr. Zapolsky scoots toward her patient. “How are you doing, Dana?”

Scully musters a smile. “I’m okay. Much better than I was last year at this time.”

“And who is your guest…?” she asks, swerving toward Mulder.

“Mulder, my partner at the Bureau. My car went dead, so he had to drive me.”

“Ah! Hello Mulder.”

Mulder nods. “Nice to meet you.”

“I see you’ve gained some weight since your last visit,” Dr. Zapolsky tells Scully. “That’s a good thing--fueling your body allows it to put energy toward ovarian function.”

Scully tries to accept this as a compliment, though she’s been conditioned not to view it as one. 

The doctor continues. “And you’re doing well on your birth control? Any problems with it?”

“Nope, everything’s working out.”

“Wonderful.” Zapolsky clasps her hands together. “Looks like we’re all set for the ultrasound. Go ahead and lie back.”

Scully does so.

“I’ll need you to pull your waistband and underwear down. Let me get you a sheet for cover.” She slides over to the cabinets and pulls out a disposable blue blanket, which she drapes over Scully’s bent knees. 

Mulder turns his head away as Scully shimmies off her skirt of choice--black, pencil, from the clearance rack at J. Crew, per usual. Not that he’d be able to see anything since she already has cover, but he’s not risking any disrespect. Scully’s not paying attention to him, and it’s a testament to the trust they have developed.

Dr. Zapolsky grabs the ultrasound wand and takes it under the sheet, using the image on the monitor to guide it into place. “Everything feel alright?” she asks Scully, who nods.

The three occupants focus intently on the screen; two of them have a clear sense of what they’re looking for, and one has no idea. A few circles appear on the monitor, narrowly standing out from the background. 

“There they are, right?” Scully inquires with tension in her voice.

Dr. Zapolsky nods. “Those are your follicles. What do you notice?”

Scully’s eyes search the screen. “There’s not many.” 

“I’m afraid not.  _ Six. _ One more than last time, but not the improvement you would need.” Dr. Zapolsky frowns. “Two low antral follicle counts qualifies you for a diagnosis of primary ovarian insufficiency. There’s no clear treatment plan, it simply functions as a label for your condition.”

Scully sits with this numbness as her doctor removes the ultrasound wand and cleans up. She wants to look at Mulder, read his face, but he’s over her shoulder and she can’t bend that way just yet. She takes a breath and pulls her skirt back on.

“So there’s no hope, then?” Her voice shakes. “Of carrying a child with one of my own eggs?” 

The doctor finishes washing her hands and turns back toward her patient. “There’s a five to ten percent conception rate for women with POI. If you’re dead-set on it, IVF using an egg donor is your best option. Personally, I don’t recommend it at those odds. It’s very expensive and can take quite a physical toll.” She pats her patient’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Dana.”

With tears threatening to break her composure, Scully cranes her neck toward Mulder. He’s her escape hatch, but he’s not doing much better. His hands are squeezed into fists, his eyes dark. “I’m sorry, Scully,” he murmurs. “You don’t deserve this.”

And even if he’s right it doesn’t make any difference, because this is what she’s gotten, and this is what she must deal with. Gravity’s full brunt bears down on her body and spirit, and she wonders once again if God intends her for heaven or for hell. 

\-------------------------

The sun is sinking below the horizon by the time Scully sets her keys on her front table. If she wasn’t exhausted before, she is after buying jumper cables and using Mulder’s car to start hers. She hears clanging pots and pans and can only hope it’s her sister home from the lunch shift.

Forcing her tired body into the kitchen, Scully finds Melissa at the stove. The smell of marinara sauce wafts through the air. 

Missy looks away from the boiling pasta she’s stirring. “Hello jellybean!” Neither one of them knows where the new nickname came from, but neither one is against it either.

“Hey Missy,” Scully says as she plops into a dining chair. She slides off her heels and stretches her toes.

“How was your day?”

“Alright,” Scully sighs. “Paperwork and then my ultrasound appointment, but my battery died so Mulder had to take me.”

“Oh my goodness!” Missy turns the heat down on the stove and strides over to her sister. “I forgot that was today...how was it?”

Scully looks up through her lashes. “Not good, Missy.”

“No?” Missy slides into the adjacent chair. “Were your counts still low?”

Scully nods, picks a piece of lint off her skirt. “Too low. Doc says I have primary ovarian insufficiency. Basically, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to have a child with my own egg.”

“God…” Missy sandwiches one of her sister’s hands between both of hers. “I’m so sorry. That’s not what you wanted to hear, I know.”

Across the way, the boiling water sings a siren song, and Missy reluctantly makes her way back toward it. “You’ll have to accept my condolences in the form of food cause I’m too far into this to stop now.”

“Oh, I will.” She’d be having a salad or...well, probably nothing, if Missy wasn’t here. Scully leans back, examines the ceiling, then rubs her eyes. “Did you know that babies can spook at loud noises through the womb? At 28 weeks, at least.”

“No, I didn’t,” Missy answers with gusto, happy to distract her sister.

“Mulder read it on some poster, and I didn’t think it was true, but it turns out it is,” Scully rambles.

“ _ Mulder _ read it...?” Missy echoes. “He went in with you?”

“Uh-huh.” Scully’s immune to the usual implications of her sister’s curiosity. She’s had too much of a day to argue that Mulder isn’t as integral a part of her life as he is. “It was nice...I was happy not to be alone.”

“I’m sure,” Missy says, pouring the ravioli into a colander. “Mulder’s a good guy.”

“Mm-hm.” Scully chews the inside of her cheek. She can’t discern whether she’s failing to repress a feeling or experiencing one anew, but it’s in that ballpark. 

Having put the pasta in a serving bowl, Missy spoons sauce over it like she’s auditioning for a cooking show. “There was an interesting voicemail on the machine when I got in,” she begins.

“Yeah? A telemarketer? Scammer?” 

“I don’t think so. It’s odd, but it sounds quite urgent.”

Missy hits a button on the answering machine. A gruff voice fills the room. “Hello, this is Agent Feniston from the California Bureau of Investigation looking for a Ms. Scully. I am contacting you on behalf of the California Department of Social Services foster care system. Please get back to me as soon as possible at 619-555-1334. Thank you.”

It does sound legitimate, Scully can’t argue with that. She raises an eyebrow at her sister. “You were in California for a while, weren’t you?”

Missy pops a ravioli into her mouth, wipes some wandering sauce off her lip. “The Bay area, mostly,” she says between bites. “The 619 area code is--”

“San Diego. I remember, that’s what our number started with when we lived by the shipyard.”

Missy nods. “I know I’m considered the free spirit in this family, but no child of mine is running wild in California. Let’s clear that up right now,” she chuckles. 

“I mean, we don’t have any details,” Scully says. “They probably just need you to testify whether some friend of yours is stable enough to resume custody of their child.”

“Does that sound like something that would warrant a call from the  _ Bureau of Investigation? _ ” Missy challenges, scooping a hefty portion of pasta into a bowl and handing it to her sister. 

Scully takes it and grabs a fork. “If they couldn’t find any other way to contact you.”

Missy stops, looks at her sister with a pointed glare.

“What?” Scully shrugs.

“Darling,” Missy continues, “no one I knew in California has this number, nor any way to determine that I’m living with you.”

Scully lifts the fork to her mouth, freezing before it makes it there. “You think the call is for  _ me? _ ”

“I think it’s a possibility,” she says, taking a seat across from her sister.

Scully scoffs. “I haven’t been to California in ages. There was a case in Marin County, but it’s been two years now.”

“That’s funny,” Missy muses. “I was living there then.”

“Can we stay on topic, please?” Scully tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m not fond of having a random call from the California foster system on my answering machine.”

“Then call Agent Feniston back, and it won’t be random anymore.” Missy gets up, glances at the clock, and grabs the phone off its receiver. “It’s only 3:30 in Californiaaaaa,” she sing-songs, dangling it in front of her sister. 

Scully pouts, but lets the weight of the phone rest in her hand. “Can you play the voicemail again? I need the number…”

Feniston addresses them for a second time, and Scully taps the keypad in concert with his directions: _ 619-555-1334.  _

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so let me know what you think!!


End file.
